Hiring Native American Faculty in Engineering and Construction: Challenges from an Institutional Perspective

Engineering schools, including construction engineering and management programs, have been generally unable to recruit Native American (NA) faculty in the United States. Consequently, NA construction and engineering students lack role models in academia, and research universities miss the opportunity of producing research that is relevant to NA issues. To understand what are the challenges to hiring NA faculty as perceived by the institutions, the authors interviewed engineering deans from various research institutions across the country. The preliminary results presented in this paper show that university administrators perceive the “lack of NA applicants” as the main challenge to hiring NA faculty in engineering. However, the results also highlighted that most of the institutions that participated in this study do not provide enough resources to support the NA’s desire to give back to their communities. Most deans admitted not being aware of whether their colleges engage with NA tribes in terms of research and service. Also, from the few examples of tribal engagement brought up by the deans, most were limited to temporary research projects that investigated tribal issues. Finally, the vast majority of the deans acknowledged that their colleges avoid hiring their own Ph.D. candidates as faculty, which poses an extra challenge to NA applicants, many of which want to remain close to their families and communities.