When Jodi Wetzel, director of Metro State’s Institute for Women’s Studies and Services, entered the University of Utah as a freshman in 1961 only 39 percent of the students were women. Today, the average percentage of female undergraduates at American colleges and universities hovers in the 60 percent range. Likewise, women are earning graduate and professional degrees at higher rates than men.

On June 27, The Denver Post took the University of Colorado to task, not for the number of women it educates, but for the number of women on its faculty. According to numbers compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education, only 27 percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty at CU-Boulder are women. Reporting results from a federally funded study, the Post said, “The analysis concluded that even if 50 percent of all new CU hires were women, it would take 28 years for women to make up 40 percent of the faculty.”

CU is not alone in its predicament. Harvard, Vanderbilt, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Florida and Rice University all have similar percentages of women or worse.

Compared to these major research universities, Metro State is relatively balanced. According to data compiled by the Office of Institutional Research for 2004-05, 43 percent of Metro’s full-time faculty members are women. And if part-time faculty are added into the mix, the percentage sits at just over 45 percent. Indeed Metro’s figures validate research from 2001-02 that shows women comprise about 48 percent of teachers at two-year colleges, 38 percent at baccalaureate-granting schools and 28 percent at research institutions.

Theories abound as to why women haven’t penetrated the professorate at research institutions in greater numbers. The Chronicle of Higher Education, which tackled this question last December, suggested that “the higher up the academic-prestige ladder a university is, the fewer women it usually has in tenured faculty positions.”

Jodi Wetzel agrees. “We’re not an elite school,” she says. “The higher you go in academia, the fewer women there are.”

Others point to the academic hoops young professors must jump through in order to earn tenure. Women concerned about balancing work and family and the time demands associated with the publish-or-perish model at research universities may choose a school with a teaching mission—or leave academia all together.

“As a scientist in a research institution,” explains Joan Foster, who chairs the Biology Department, “I’d probably have to put in more hours a week. It’s a different kind of position, which demands lots of publications and grants. You have to make a reputation.”

Citing Metro State’s recent history where at one point women held the highest administrative and academic offices at the college, including president, provost, dean and vice president, Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs Joan M. C. Foster, says Metro has worked hard to achieve gender balance in all its hiring. “We are a teaching institution,” she says, “and there’s a tradition of women doing quality teaching.”

“We’re a nontraditional school,” adds Professor Foster from the Biology Department, “with nontraditional students. So it would make sense that we have a nontraditional faculty.”