Globalization and knowledge-driven economies have created a transnational landscape of career opportunities for scholars in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Attracting and retaining highly skilled individuals has been an important discussion in academic literature. For several decades, foreign-born faculty members have pursued their careers in the American professoriate and make up a significant percentage of STEM disciplines. As competition for talent increases across borders, little is understood about foreign-born faculty members in the American professoriate. The present research investigated the embeddedness of university professors who are foreign-born and employed in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines at comprehensive universities in the United States. Embeddedness is a positive construct that focuses on why people stay in their jobs. This study utilized online survey methodology to collect data from individuals who were clustered at randomly selected comprehensive universities. The institution served as a means to find eligible participants; no data was collected on the institution or the local community.The analysis of data collected included calculating an embeddedness index for the study sample; analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-tests were used to help explain the variance in embeddedness of foreign-born faculty members included in the present study. Descriptive analysis was used to help understand what describes the foreign-born STEM faculty members in this study. The data from the present study show that foreign-born faculty members are highly embedded. Embeddedness in the university was significantly higher than embeddedness in the community. Factors such as gender, homeownership, and geographical region of origin were found influential in the embeddedness of foreign-born faculty members who participated in the present study. In addition, for nearly a quarter of the sample in the present study, identifying as foreign-born was not synonymous with identifying as an international faculty member.Findings from the present research can inform policy and practices related to recruitment, socialization and retention of foreign-born faculty members in the American professoriate. University administrators and policy makers should consider these findings and explore ways to increase the embeddedness of foreign-born faculty members in the community. Recommendations for future research, policy, and practice are included.
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