🔗 linkedin.com/in/willettecapers

Research Focus: Faculty Retention • DEI in Higher Education • Mentorship

“Black Girl Magic Through Recruitment and Retention: The Lived Experiences of Black Women Faculty at ELCA-Affiliated Institutions”

What research challenge did your dissertation address?

My dissertation examines the systemic and cultural conditions that drive the underrepresentation and attrition of Black women faculty at historically white, ELCA-affiliated institutions. These faculty members regularly navigate intersecting racial and gender bias, professional isolation, limited access to culturally responsive mentorship, inequitable service expectations, and workplace climates that don’t always recognize their full humanity. My research also examines the disconnect between what institutions say they value, including equity, inclusion, belonging, and faith-based social justice, and what Black women faculty actually experience day to day. Rather than treating retention as a matter of individual resilience, I frame it as an institutional responsibility that requires structural change and accountable leadership.

What inspired you to pursue this research?

I came to this work as a Black woman who has spent her career inside historically white, faith-based institutions, and through what I witnessed in the experiences of other Black women faculty around me. I saw talented scholars contributing deeply to their institutions while navigating isolation, racialized and gendered expectations, and unequal service burdens. My professional work in DEI, faculty development, and institutional leadership kept surfacing the same troubling gap: what institutions publicly affirm and what Black women faculty actually experience rarely match. I wanted to understand why that disconnect persists and, just as importantly, to move past documenting the harm and toward a practical, culturally responsive intervention.

What did your research find, and what is its impact?

Culturally responsive mentorship emerged as a genuinely promising strategy for reducing isolation, strengthening belonging, and improving professional support for Black women faculty. The research also produced practical tools institutions can use directly, including a mentorship certificate model, training resources, and recommendations for institutional accountability. Its broader impact is helping institutions move past symbolic commitments to diversity and toward concrete ways of improving faculty support, workplace culture, and retention, reframing the retention of Black women faculty as a responsibility the institution holds, not a burden individual faculty members are left to carry alone.

“Culturally responsive mentorship emerged as a genuinely promising strategy for reducing isolation, strengthening belonging, and improving professional support for Black women faculty.”

Willette Capers

Full dissertation: https://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20827608