Prepared to Be a Professor, Not a Pioneer - Higher Education: Several publications and recent reports have highlighted the plight of Women of Color (WOC) in the academy, particularly WOC within science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) fields. In November 2013, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research published “Accelerating Change for Women Faculty of Color in STEM: Policy, Action, and Collaboration,” which reports that WOC represent only 5.7 percent (i.e., 6,400) of all STEM faculty at U.S. four-year colleges or universities, medical schools, and university-affiliated research institutes. With this initially low number, there are few to no reports or public databases presenting disaggregated data about STEM WOC faculty within specific disciplines such as engineering.
