Diversity in the Ivory White Tower

Abstract

Scholars have highlighted the importance of recruitment, retention, and promotion of racial-ethnic minority faculty for the field of counseling psychology. This study examines the specialty’s progress by chronicling the racial-ethnic composition of faculty in counseling psychology programs across time. The findings summarized begin to reveal the level of progress made toward increasing faculty racial-ethnic diversity within the field. Data generally support the collective success of counseling psychology programs in increasing racial-ethnic diversity of faculty but also highlight some of the challenges that remain to be addressed. Several possible interpretations, implications, and limitations of these findings are discussed in relation to counseling psychology’s continuing support of multiculturalism as a distinctive feature of its identity and its objectives as a specialty.