The UCA Diversity Statement outlines its values and commitments toward a more diverse student, faculty and staff population.
In it, the university claims to utilize recruitment, support and knowledge to pursue and retain a diverse community, adapt to diverse needs and enhance interaction among its diverse groups.
Anthony McMullen, an associate professor of business law at UCA, appreciates the attempts made to highlight diversity but believes the university falls short in communicating the need for such efforts.
“There are many people on our campus who appreciate diversity but have a difficult time articulating why,” McMullen said. “And that worries me because there are a lot of people who don’t.”
“There are allies on this campus,” McMullen said, “It took some work to get those allies. Some of that work those allies did on their own, they realized the situation. Others, it took being in the room and hearing stories like this to get some of those folks to recognize, here’s the situation.”
After his tenure, McMullen found that he was the first Black person to be tenured in the College of Business. “Am I honored by that? Yeah, but we’re a fifth of the way through the 21st century, and it took us this long? It’s something that matters. It matters because a lot of people had to work hard just so that I could be in this position here.”
McMullen attended high school in Russellville, then went on to receive his degrees in communication and law from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 2004. He began teaching at UCA in 2007 as an adjunct professor, then was hired full-time in 2014.
According to the University of Central Arkansas Diversity Ledger, when McMullen began his teaching career at UCA in 2007, the university employed 21 Black faculty members full-time. In 2014, the number rose to 24.
By 2021, the number had only risen by one. Black professors make up 4.7% of the total population of faculty at UCA. In comparison, in 2021, the university employed 438 white faculty members full-time, making up 82.3% of the faculty.
In terms of how those numbers are represented across campus, McMullen said, “As far as African or African American faculty, our numbers are slim. In my department, I’m the only one. In fact, not just in my department, but within the entire College of business, we’re now up to two.”
“One of the reasons diversity matters is to recognize that even within any group, you have those different gradations, those different experiences, those different approaches,” he said. “If we’re doing our job as a university in exposing students to different perspectives, no single person should be made to feel like they are the representative of an entire group.”
Being the only Black member of a department on campus is not a rarity, according to Marsha Massey.
“At this time there is only one Black faculty member in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry — myself,” Massey said. “I admit that it is unfortunately not unusual to be the only one. It was fairly typical throughout all of my training to be the only Black person in a room. I did not expect any different when I began to search for jobs.”
“Some days I don’t feel that I notice,” Massey said. “I am a chemistry professor, and I enjoy teaching others chemistry — no different from my colleagues around me. However, there are times where people are surprised I’m an instructor — particularly in our department. What I did not expect, but perhaps should have, is to stand out so much.”
Massey recalls instances when meeting people in other departments and programs who were excited to meet “the black chemistry professor.” Although a strange occurrence, Massey said she understood this as a sign that people feel hopeful, inspired and excited to have her as part of the university.
Angela Webster, whose administrative work in diversity, belonging, inclusion and equity began in 2013 as chair of the Diversity Office, said, “Imagine being in a space where most of your peers, colleagues and academic and administrative leaders do not share a vast commonality of lived experiences or outlooks. This scenario could be wrought with cultural mismatches and misunderstandings.”
With so few Black faculty at UCA, the scenario painted by Dr. Webster feels close to a reality for many underrepresented minority students and faculty on campus.
Adriian Gardner, a senior lecturer of communication, said, “We’ve lost some, we’ve gained some, and lost and gained, but I would like to see the university be more committed to a diverse faculty. We need more African American faculty and faculty of color to help serve the students we have because we’re at a predominantly white institution.”
To Gardner, representation means having many people who look like you, who have experience and are a part of your overall culture, who can help you navigate and adapt to college life. “A lot of our students enter college at a deficit, and there’s no way that we can serve them if we don’t know who they are,” he said. “We’ve got to do a better job of meeting students where they are.”
“I try to be optimistic about the university hiring more people of color, but I have to be honest with myself,” Gardner said. “All that energy that I put in raising hell and cain about hiring people, I want to put that energy in things to develop myself further. I’ll never stop helping students, but I won’t lose more sleep over them hiring Black folks, either.”
“From a pragmatic perspective, it is frustrating,” Gardner said. “Black males and females come to campus, and if they had more opportunities to connect to people that looked like them, statistically, they’d have better outcomes.”
UCA’s Diversity Ledger’s comparative race data shows the greatest disproportions in demographics between black students and black faculty, Webster said. She believes UCA is making a conscious effort to increase its number of minority faculty.
“The Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion co-hosts an Inclusive Hiring Series to offer tactics and techniques for DBIE-enhanced hiring,” Webster said. “There are a variety of cross-campus initiatives to help our body of faculty and staff more closely represent our student body.”
The 2022-2026 UCA Minority Recruitment and Retention Plan states that the university will “actively pursue and seek to retain a diverse student body, faculty and staff.”
Webster said, “UCA has created such means through education, narration and connection to help BIPOC employees know they are visible, valued and validated.”
She said that UCA offers mentoring, coaching circles and check-ins for minority faculty. The Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion also recently co-hosted a session on Retention of Employees Who Identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Color.
When asked about the emotional toll that comes with being a Black professor at a PWI, McMullen, Massey and Gardner shared varying responses.
For Gardner, he relies on his spirituality and his own advocacy to maintain his will.
“It’s not a useless cause because you can never give up on what you believe in,” Gardner said. “I’m doing what I can. I’m always gonna advocate, but I’m not gonna lose my mind about it. If UCA never hires another Black person from the time I retire to the time they put me in the ground, I’m cool with that. I can do what I can at the graduate level.”
“I’m thankful for the opportunities that UCA has provided me so far. UCA is a good institution but moving forward, I hope that we can have a more diverse workforce. It’s important,” he said.
“I teach a specific section of First-Year Seminars designed for African American males,” Gardner said. “I’ve taught this population all my life, and so I wanted to see what I could do to give back and help. I wrote a grant and a proposal in 2014 and started what’s called the Black Male Achievement Challenge.”
The curriculum deals with issues that impact African American males in higher education, Gardner said.
With different perspectives to consider, Massey weighed two sides to the topic. “I honestly debate the answer to this myself. On one hand, I want to say that yes, it is emotionally demanding to be the only Black faculty in my department. On the other hand, I believe the stresses that I would attribute to this are also concerns for my colleagues,” Massey said.
“In this regard, I can empathize with some of my students,” she said. “Sometimes you know that you need help and support, but you are not sure what to ask for. I would say the emotional and mental demands are hard to put into words.”
“When I first started teaching here, I was very shocked at how my colleagues were not only supportive but proactive. Frankly, I am proud of the fact that our department recognizes that we’re all different individuals — and that we all contribute to a larger community. In keeping with that, we try to engage everyone in discussions about our department,” Massey said.
In close collaboration with her colleagues, Massey is working on the department of chemistry’s ATOM Scholarship Program. This collaboration “resulted in a $ $650,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support 10 students with $10,000 in scholarships each year for 4 years, as well as programming for their career development and academic achievement in a chemistry major. This program aims to increase the success of low-income, academically talented students in STEM,” Massey said
In appreciation for his colleagues, McMullen said, “There are times where being the only one in the room is noticeably stressful. One of my saving graces is that I’m in an amazing department. The department of accounting is absolutely phenomenal.”
McMullen was named Master Teacher of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business, an academic organization for business law and legal studies professors, he said. “It was good to receive the respect of my peers in that area,” McMullen said.
“Growing up in Russellville and attending the University of Arkansas, it’s not the first time I’ve been the only Black person in the room,” McMullen said. “It does feel exhausting. I think everybody wants to be able to go to somebody and their race be a non-issue. That’s the society that we’re trying to get to. I look forward to that day, whether it happens in my lifetime or not.”
“While there are a lot of things and perspectives that we, Black professors, have in common, we all have different experiences, we all have different ways of how we’ve gotten here, we all have different ways of how we interpret the world,” he said.
“I think there’s validity in how I interpret the world, but my answer is certainly not the only answer. My answer certainly may not be the only correct answer, and I don’t want anybody to look at this subject and say, ‘Oh we’re all the same,’” he said.
“The reason that all of this matters and we want to bring in these diverse perspectives is so that we can at least train ourselves to recognize that even though there are all of those commonalities, there is not one perspective out there that every single one of us share,” McMullen said.