Faculty Perspective
Key members of the UT Faculty have stepped up to fill gaps in history and support that they saw on campus and in society as a whole. Be it by advocating for student rights on campus, lobbying for more inclusivity at the capital, or by simply supporting students on a personal level, faculty members have played a supporting role in filling the gaps they saw in the world. Though not all faculty had these noble interests in mind (for example, the recent sexual assault allegations) some professors and faculty had one goal in mind: to incite positive change in the World, as our school motto suggests. Our goal in this section is to highlight those faculty members who became the change that they wanted to see in the world, even when there was no expectation that they would do so.
Gaps exist. Generally, information about demographics in higher education is hard to come by before the 1970s. The University of Texas, in particular, did not begin the collection of race and gender demographic data until 1980. Still, this information was entirely about students; the only demographic information listed about faculty in 1980 was their average salary, and there remains no demographic information on faculty to this day. This is evidence that many of the gaps that existed in the 80s still exist today (Statistical Handbook offered by the UT Office of Institutional Studies). While we may collect quantitative information while exploring impactful faculty, we hope in this section to highlight the aspects of faculty that cannot be quantified, such as their work as advocates for gender and race equality.