The recent Campus Climate Survey conducted at the University of Rhode Island showed a level of discontent with the climate at URI from faculty and students alike.
Of all the subgroups, faculty made up the smallest percentage of survey respondents at 11 percent. Kathleen McIntyre, associate director of the honors program and assistant professor of gender and women’s studies, expressed her disappointment in the lack of participation and what she took away from those numbers.
“Only 11 percent of respondents are faculty, which is a little disappointing, but out of that percentage about 60 percent were female and 40 percent were male, so more women, more than the men, are taking the time out to do the survey, and you usually fill out surveys if you’re super satisfied or unsatisfied,” McIntyre said.
She mentioned that she felt valued at the University, but also pointed out how her gender has impacted her personal experience and the experiences of female staff in general.
McIntyre connected the higher response rate of female faculty to higher rates of dissatisfaction at URI.
“Overall, it seemed to me from the survey that female professors felt less valued than male professors, and it wasn’t like it wasn’t a huge percentage,” McIntyre said.
Ben Anderson, an associate professor of three-dimensional art and sculpture and chair of the department of art and art history, said that he’s been working at URI since 2006 and that he personally feels supported and valued by the University.
The survey results cited respondents who felt there were discrepancies across disciplines at the university, one unnamed respondent writing, “Faculty salaries across departments are not equitable, e.g., faculty in engineering make more than similar positions in some of the Arts & Sciences positions, e.g. the languages.”
Anderson thinks that Marc Parlange, the University’s new president, will be an asset to the arts in the future.
“I have high hopes for this incoming president, you know, and I feel he’s been reaching out to our department, to the arts in general,” Anderson said. “I think he’s been very open and making an effort to learn more about our department.”
McIntyre said that a lot of the issues women face aren’t directly stemming from academic institutions but to societal standards, such as the idea that women should be the caretaker in a family or that they should pick up extra unpaid labor in the workplace. She mentioned that when parents had to stay home during COVID-19, it was stereotypically the mother who both cared for children and did her job.
“I noticed this at three different institutions in a department, whether it’s staff or faculty, it’s usually women who are expected to bake cakes when it’s somebody’s birthday or collect money for flowers when a faculty member or staff member has maybe lost an elderly parent,” McIntyre said. “That might seem kind of silly, but I just noticed that men are less likely to do the collections for gifts or do baked goods, yet they are the first to kind of grab at it and expect it.”
She noted that she experiences these discrepancies as a woman, and acknowledged that people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community also often feel obligated to pick up the slack in these situations.
“I think that there should be more pay or incentives for people who do extra service work or are expected to do extra service work again,” McIntyre said. “Because that from the survey results, and this mimics natural trends, it seems like female faculty and faculty of color are more likely to do heavy service loads.”
Both are hopeful for the years to come, and McIntyre said that for some areas of the survey, the University outranked national levels, so the future is very promising. Anderson said that the upcoming renovations of the Fine Arts Center support his confidence in URI and the new president’s work at the University.