Professor of the Higher Education Department at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education Dr. Ana M. Martínez Alemán came to the University of Connecticut’s Puerto Rican and Latin American Cultural Center Wednesday afternoon to speak about breaking down the bias problems that plague America’s higher education system from a student-to-professor perspective.
“The big question is: Does race, age and gender effect learning at higher education institutions? The answer is, it does,” Dr. Martínez Alemán began.
Dr. Martínez Alemán has been studying and analyzing racism and sexism for many years and derives her perceptions of higher education classrooms from statistics gathered from institutions. She remarked that for most of the 20th century, getting this information about collegiate educators was extremely difficult without actually being in the classroom, whereas the K-12 systems were very good at getting the data and responding in a constructive fashion.
She extrapolated on a huge variety of topics outside of gender and race, making a clear distinction of race vs. ethnicity and gender vs. sex, all with unique effects on perceptions of educators from students. This data shows that men are less likely to come under scrutiny as educators than women, regardless of their race.
