Appendix 1 - Methodology and Demographics

A survey of full-time faculty members in Rice University’s schools of natural science and engineering was conducted in January 2002 as part of the evaluation for Rice’s National Science Foundation Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professorate Program. A major goal of the survey was to acquire data on faculty perceptions, not particular facts about departments or Rice University. The survey sample was solicited through a letter from Dr. Jordan Konisky, Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Studies at Rice University. The letter was sent to 222 faculty members in all departments in the schools of science and engineering (at that time a total of 15 departments) requesting that they fill out a web survey. A second request was sent out two weeks later to those who had not filled out the survey. Ninety-seven faculty members from 15 total departments filled out the survey, with a resulting response rate of 44%. Table 1 below provides the response rate by department.

Table 1: Survey response rate by faculty members’ department

Demographics of the survey respondents

The sample of 97 faculty members was composed of 82 men (85%) and 15 women (15%). Ninety-one percent of the sample was White, 3% Hispanic, and 6% Asian or Pacific Islander. Table 2 shows the ethnic breakdown by gender.

Table 2: Gender and ethnicity of faculty survey respondents

Faculty survey respondents were predominantly from the United States (73%). The remaining respondents were from 22 countries other than the United States.

With respect to the rank of faculty responding to the survey, 56% were full professors (see Table 3).

Table 3: Faculty respondents’ rank at Rice University

The average number of years that the faculty survey respondents had been at Rice University was 14 years, with a median of 11 years (see Table 4).

Table 4: Faculty respondents’ years at Rice University

It is also interesting to note that 61% of faculty survey respondents had no minority graduate students currently working in their research labs (see Table 5).

Table 5: Percentage of minority graduate students in the labs of faculty respondents

Faculty Interviews

A set of interviews was also conducted with fourteen Rice University faculty members in July 2000 as part of the evaluation for Rice’s National Science Foundation Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professorate Program (AGEP). These interviews were conducted with faculty from the schools of natural science and engineering that had agreed to serve on the Executive Committee for the Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professorate Program. Open-ended interviews were conducted by telephone and, in all but one case, were tape-recorded.