Tennessee state and regional officials are seeking to increase the number of black professors at colleges and universities, according to The Tennessean.

Currently, Tennessee black faculty makes up 9 percent of the total full-time faculty in four-year colleges and universities, compared to a national average of 5 percent. However, this number has been largely stagnant while the black student ratio has increased from 5 percent within the past 10 years.

To James Hill, a Vanderbilt graduate student pursuing a research-oriented career in academics, the focus should fundamentally be on attracting students.

“In order to attract more black professors, you need to have more black graduate students that want to pursue a career in academia, and not stop at their Masters or Ph.D., then enter a non-academia position,” said Hill.

In order to reach this goal, a $2 million scholarship project through the Southern Regional Education Board has been created to encourage minority doctoral candidates to stay in academia. According to experts, a problem preventing black candidates from completing their doctoral degrees is finance.

Overall, Hill personally saw no difficulties as a black graduate student pursuing his career goals. However, he noted that having a mentor of the same race would be a “win-win situation” just because they “may be able to understand you better.”

With the recent state budget crisis, it has been harder to attract students and professors as hiring has been frozen and other jobs have been eliminated. However, Vanderbilt is one of the universities strongly pushing diversity, and “they are doing the best they can,” Hill said.