Exploring the Relationship Between Religion and Resilience Among Latina Academics in Higher Education

Latinas make up a small percentage of full-time professors in institutions of higher education within the United States. Latinas are also the lowest earners of graduate degrees. With such a small percentage of Latinas earning a graduate degree and becoming Latina academics, it merits investigating what allowed them to persist in the pursuit of their professions in academia. This study hypothesized a relationship between religion and resilience for Latina academics. More specifically, Latina academics who scored religious or highly religious on “The Centrality of Religiosity” scale - CRS-5 would have a higher probability of being more resilient than those who scored not-religious on the scale. “The Centrality of Religiosity Scale” and “The Brief Resilience Scale” along with demographic questions composited the “Religious Resilient Survey” (RRS). The RRS was used to evaluate the study. Using primary data from the RRS, this study\u27s findings indicate that there is no statistically significant relationship between religion and resilience scores for Latina academics. This study does uncover a statistically significant relationship between dimensions of scale items. Overall, this study’s findings demonstrated that Latina academics are highly resilient, and the majority are religious. These findings can help identify underlying values that can aid Latinas to persevere and succeed in both their academic and professional pursuits