"Diversity enriches a school’s curriculum and research," says Dipak Jain, Kellogg’s associate dean for academic affairs. "Our goals are to provide everyone with an opportunity to excel in academia and to create a greater representation of minorities in higher education."

Much work remains. But a growing number of underrepresented minorities are being drawn to careers in business academia. In fact, thanks to the efforts of the Ph.D. Project and schools such as Kellogg, the number of African-, Hispanic- and Native-American professors produced in the United States is expected to double within the next five years.

The numbers tell it all

When Sonya Grier, Kellogg Ph.D. ’96, first started teaching marketing at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business three years ago, many students and even some of her fellow faculty members mistook her for an administrative assistant.

Their mistake "was directly related to the issue of there not being many African-American professors here," says Grier, who was the only black faculty member at the GSB at the time. "If people aren’t used to seeing black professors and they see a black woman in the copy room, they will think she is support staff. The numbers do have an impact on what people begin to think of as normal."

The numbers also tell a disturbing story about the makeup of business school faculties in America.

Only 3.2 percent of all business school professors–including adjuncts and clinicals–are African-, Hispanic- and Native-Americans, according to a June Business Week report. This group, which makes up almost one-fourth of the U.S. population, represents a mere 2 percent of all tenured business professors. Worse yet, several of the top U.S. business schools employ no underrepresented minority faculty at all.

Such numbers don’t bode well in light of research that links the presence of minority professors to the number of minority students enrolled in an MBA program. Although a greater number of minorities are entering MBA programs, the numbers are still lagging. According to Business Week, only 9 percent of the 1997 graduates of its top 25 business schools are underrepresented minorities.

"There just aren’t enough people of color graduating from American business schools," says David Morgan, manager of recruiting operations and college relations at the Ford Co. "Students need mentors in America’s business schools who will encourage and support their pursuit of advanced degrees. More minority faculty members will mean more students of color will pursue MBAs, resulting in a larger number of candidates for the employment opportunities we offer. That’s good for everyone."

Grier knows well how the presence of minority professors can impact the experiences of minority MBA students. "The first time I taught at Kellogg, a black student came up to me after class and said, ‘I felt so comfortable having you at the front of the classroom and I never knew I felt uncomfortable in other class situations,’ " she recalls. "He went on to tell me that he spoke more in class as a result."

Of course, it’s not just the minority students who benefit from having minority professors leading business school classes.

"The preparation of all students has to be enhanced if they are learning from people who have diverse perspectives," says Bernard J. Milano, executive director and trustee of the KPMG Foundation and coordinator of the Ph.D. Project. "Clearly, an all-white, male faculty is not going to give people the breadth of understanding in any issue that they would achieve if they had a faculty of mixed gender and race."

During her three years at Stanford, Grier already has increased the breadth of the school’s marketing curriculum with her research on ethnic target marketing. "This is at the cornerstone of what is going on in the marketplace today," she says. "Still, there is very limited research being done on race in marketing."