This is the eleventh in a weekly series called Bobcats by the Numbers comparing Ohio University to the other five Mid-American Conference universities in Ohio.
Read the previous entry in this series about academic centers for student-athletes at each Ohio MAC school.
In the 2015-16 academic year, Ohio University had the highest percentage of minority full-time faculty members of the six Mid-American Conference universities.
Despite having the highest percentage of minority full-time faculty members, OU had the lowest percentage of female full-time faculty members.
The six MAC universities in Ohio include OU, Miami University, Bowling Green, the University of Toledo, Kent State University and the University of Akron. About 27 percent of OU’s full-time faculty members were minorities, or not white, and Asian-Americans made up the highest number of those minorities, according to OU's Office of Institutional Research. Forty percent of the full-time faculty at OU were women.
Cheryl Mukosiku, a senior studying biological sciences, said the university could do more for diversity, but the current levels do not surprise her.
“In academic circles, there’s definitely underrepresentation of both females and minorities,” Mukosiku said.
She said she hasn’t seen much diversity when it comes to her professors.
“Diversity maybe in terms of gender, being female, and things like that, but not necessarily in terms of race,” Mukosiku said.
Kyrsten Nitz, a sophomore studying nursing at OU, said most of her nursing professors are female, but different fields have different populations.
Minority full-time faculty members make up 12 percent of Kent State's faculty, the lowest of the six universities.
About 56 percent of full-time faculty members at BGSU were women, the highest percentage in the MAC.
The low percentage of minorities and women in full-time faculty positions at OU did not surprise Katherine Jellison, a professor and chair of OU's history department.
“A lot of that has to do with those three words in real estate: location, location, location,” Jellison said. “I think it’s the nature of where we’re located, so trying to recruit more diverse faculty is sometimes difficult in a place like Athens because people worry about (if they will) have a community there.”
She said she believes OU is trying to improve diversity, but she thinks it can hard for people to come to Athens if their first language isn’t English.
“I think there are probably some linguistic challenges to recruiting diverse faculty whose first language isn’t English if they want to have a community who (speaks) their first language,” Jellison said.
