How Black Engineering and Computing Faculty Exercise an Equity Ethic to Racially Fortify and Enrich Black Students

U.S. universities are fraught with institutional barriers that challenge Black faculty members’ ability to thrive in academia, while they also make attempts to broaden access and participation in fields like engineering and computing. The diversity-related service requested of Black faculty members can negatively complicate their chances for tenure and promotion. This qualitative research centers on the narratives of 39 Black faculty members in engineering and computing, guided by the equity ethic framework, which we use to understand their motivations to reduce racial inequities in their fields. We found that due to being overburdened with service requests, Black faculty responded by guarding their time and energy to focus instead on self-initiated, diversity-related service. In this paper, we focus on how these Black faculty members work to broaden participation in their fields by mentoring Black students during critical academic junctures while offering supportive anti-deficit teaching and mentoring. We argue that their self-initiated activities are a form of service that is critical to widening Black participation in engineering and computing and should not be overlooked in reviewing yearly raises or in the tenure and promotion process.