Report from Subcommittee on Diverse Faculty Hiring
Submitted to University Council on June 24, 2009
I. The Committee’s Charge
We have been charged with developing "strategies for recruiting, developing, and
retaining faculty from underutilized populations, accurately identifying both general and
demographically specific challenges and opportunities and ensuring adherence to
disciplinary and professional standards of practice." We adopted the following
procedure:
First, we posted the larger group of twenty colleagues assigned to us by the University
Diversity Council (UDC) to solicit their ideas, asking them to respond by April 3rd. We
added a part-time faculty member, Fannie Brown who teaches part-time for the College
of Education and is known for her expertise on inclusiveness, to this larger list. Second,
we formed a core working group (Patricia Hill, Zachary Williams, Sheldon Wrice, Linda
Barrett, Fannie Brown, Pat Wallace and the two subcommittee co-chairs, Cynthia Capers
and Bill Lyons) and received several suggestions from this group. The core group was
then charged with the task of reviewing these ideas in order to bring these together into
one coherent document that will serve as our working draft. We scheduled that meeting
of the core working group for Wednesday April 8th from 3:30-5:00 to finalize that step in
the process.
Third, once we created a working draft we sent this out to the larger list again for review
and comment by May 1. Finally, on Monday June 15th the core working group
incorporated these comments and suggestions to create a final proposal ready to present
to the University Diversity Council at their August meeting.
II. General Principles
Invest in a Diverse Campus Culture. Like our Student Success Initiative, we need a
campus-wide, ongoing, investment at every level of the university in engaging and
understanding the pragmatic importance of valuing diversity and holding all units
accountable to valuing diversity. Our charge is only to focus on faculty, but if we want to
attract and retain talented and diverse faculty we need a campus-wide approach to
diversity that demonstrates to candidates and to new hires that when we say we value
diversity we really mean it at The University of Akron. We should, for instance, place a
high priority on hiring a diverse Provost and/or Associate Provost because this not only
reflects Ohio’s ethnic diversity, but will also facilitate hiring and retaining diverse
faculty. By ‘diverse’ we mean under-represented and under-utilized populations, and
given the data on The University of Akron in Table 1 on the top of the next page, this
means placing a very high priority on hiring and retaining African-American faculty. As
you can see from Table 2 below, African-American faculty are extremely underrepresented on our campus, requiring more than a five-fold increase to break even.
Conversely, the number of UA faculty in each of the other minority categories shown
ranges from simply over-represented to vastly over-represented. Tables 3, 4, and 5
provide more details about minority faculty in tenure and tenured track positions.
Table 1: FT, Regular, Teaching/Research Faculty as of 4/27/09
Am.
Indian
Asian
Buchtel College of Arts & Sci
College of Business Admin.
Hispanic
Unknown
9
11
6
205
0.00%
9.06%
3.54%
4.33%
2.36%
80.71%
1
13
4
1
35
1.85%
24.07%
7.41%
1.85%
64.81%
6
3
1
47
0.00%
10.53%
5.26%
0.00%
1.75%
82.46%
1
27
2
1
1.59%
42.86%
3.17%
1.59%
4
3
2
3.42%
2.56%
1.71%
College of Fine & Applied Arts
0.00%
College of Nursing
0.00%
32
0.00%
0.00%
0.00%
0.00%
College of Polymer Sci & Engr
0.00%
0.00%
95.45%
1
2
16
3.85%
7.69%
61.54%
0.00%
26.92%
0.00%
1
1
2
3.57%
3.57%
7.14%
2
11
2.50%
13.75%
1
1
0.00%
4.00%
4.00%
0.00%
0.00%
92.00%
3
84
37
15
10
599
0.40%
11.23%
4.95%
2.01%
1.34%
80.08%
0.00%
Wayne College
24
0.00%
0.00%
0.00%
54
57
63
117
44
26
28
85.71%
67
0.00%
254
92.31%
42
7
Summit College
Grand Total
4.55%
Grand Total
50.79%
108
2
School of Law
White
23
College of Education
College of Engineering
Black
80
83.75%
23
25
748
Prepared by C. Edwards 4/27/09
Table 2: Percentage for Each Ethnic Group in UA Faculty and in the City of Akron
UA faculty
City of Akron
Native
American
.40%
.26%
Asian
11.23%
1.5%
Hispanic
2.01%
1.16%
Black
4.95%
28.5%
2
Table 3: Number of Tenure Faculty
YEAR
Total Full-time
Faculty (Tenured)
508
505
512
514
505
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
Table 4: Number of Tenure Track Faculty
Year
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
157
133
119
116
126
Full Time Faculty
(Tenure Track)
Total FT Black
Faculty (Tenured)
Total Minority Faculty
(Tenured)
82
83
88
90
90
Total FT Black Faculty
(Tenure Track)
7
6
3
3
6
Total Minority Faculty
(Tenure Track)
20
25
21
20
25
30
29
32
29
28
Table 5: Full Time Tenure and Tenure Track Faculty at The University of Akron
Year
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
All Faculty
665
638
631
630
631
Black Faculty Percent Black
37
35
35
32
34
5.6%
5.5%
5.5%
5.1%
5.4%
102
108
109
110
125
Minority
Faculty
Percent
Minority
15.3%
16.9%
17.3%
17.5%
19.8%
Effective strategies for developing and retaining faculty, tenured and tenure track, must
include recommendations that extend beyond work with individual faculty and include
consideration of structural and environmental challenges and opportunities, such as
ensuring a strong Pan-African Studies Center and Program, Women Studies Program, the
Office of Multicultural Development, Academic Achievement Programs, the McNair
Scholars Program and supporting the faculty-staff-student communities that grow up
around these and related units or initiatives (like Black History Month, the Black Male
Summit and Rethinking Race, for instance). The general principle here is that a
successful policy for hiring more diverse faculty depends on investing in a campus
culture that values diversity of ideas and cultures, racial and ethnic background, physical
ability, sexual orientation and national identification, staff and student perspectives, fulltime and part-time faculty perspectives.
Invest in Initial Offers, Start-up Packages, and Counteroffers. While an effective
strategy cannot depend entirely on financial factors any successful strategy must include
a serious and sober effort to address financial factors, such as compensation and a
willingness to make counteroffers. In support of these aspects of any effective approach,
3
the university should both invest permanent budget dollars and seek external funding
when available (see grant opportunities listed below in supplementary information).
Invest in Our Internal Capacities. As with any initiative on campus, there is always
tension between using (and developing) our own internal capacity and hiring outside
consultants to visit our campus. Outside consulting firms, like Diversity Works, Inc.,
should only be used as tertiary tactics, since they are more costly than using internal
talent, and usually deliver off-the-shelf products not designed for effective use within one
particular community. In addition, we believe that the appropriate expertise already
exists on campus. The importance of using internal talent may be more critical for
faculty hires than for staff hires, because the relational networks needed to ensure a
diverse applicant pool are disciplinary. Moreover, for years faculty have been the most
significant voice on campus in favor of investing in hiring more diverse faculty
colleagues.
Faculty are one of the most important resources in creating a diverse faculty because they
are more likely to have the disciplinary knowledge and networks required for success.
Because they live lives that are embedded within the diverse networks of their
disciplines, these same faculty are also more likely to bring the communication skills and
cultural sensitivity needed to exploit these relational networks at the hiring stage and to
provide and enable the collegial support systems so critical for developing new faculty
talent to maximize the possibility of retention. The general principle is to depend on our
internal capacity and local talent whenever possible. Outside consultants should be used
as sparingly as possible, if at all, and preferably with the support of the faculty leading
the effort. The resources utilized in developing our internal capacity should include
Diversifying the Faculty: A Guidebook for Search Committees, Caroline Sotello Viernes
Turner, Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2002.
Invest in Advocacy. Investing in a diverse campus culture, strong initial offers, start-up
packages, counteroffers, writing effective job ads, and developing our internal capacity
are all complex and ongoing endeavors, for which we must provide appropriate support.
This will include providing appropriate education and training for search committees.
Gaston Reinoso in Human Resources has developed a draft PowerPoint designed for this
purpose (attached). This tool is a good first step. However, the current draft version of
this tool could be strengthened in consultation with this subcommittee (as a tool to
enhance diversity endeavors across campus). At least three areas of the current draft
require clarification: an apparent assumption that the obstacle to more diverse hiring is
that faculty fail to understand the importance of diverse hiring (see slide 17 and also 9);
in the retention section slide 19 appears to dismiss compensation as a primary obstacle,
despite an ineffective track record on our campus of making competitive counteroffers;
and in several places this PowerPoint seems to infer that we can satisfy our diversity
goals without concern for skin color—an approach with which this subcommittee
respectfully disagrees. This subcommittee could become a permanent advisory group,
bringing faculty and staff together to advocate for the recommendations presented here.
4
We have divided our more specific proposals into two parts. First, we outline strategies
for recruiting and hiring more diverse faculty colleagues. Second, we include strategies
for supporting and retaining these colleagues once they arrive at UA.
III. Recruiting and Hiring More Diverse Faculty
1. Investing in Compensation. Support hiring by advertising in (often disciplinespecific) specialized sites where more minority colleagues are plugged-in and by
making competitive salary and start-up packages (with a minority faculty
premium) available for diverse faculty hires.
2. Invest in Relationships. Leaders on campus must develop broad, diverse, and
high-quality interpersonal networks that can become pipelines for generating a
diverse pool of high-quality candidates for faculty positions. In this regard,
formal efforts would include attending professional meetings that attract more
diverse colleagues with position descriptions available for distribution as early in
the search process as possible. Less formal efforts could include (1) working with
faculty on campus with expertise in the relevant areas of inquiry on an ongoing
basis, so those relationships are strong enough to support the commitment we are
outlining here, (2) taking individuals to lunch to discuss positions available at
institution, (3) asking faculty with expertise in the discipline to lead search efforts
from the earliest stages, (4) ensuring other faculty in the area are consulted for
recommendations throughout the process, or (5) enabling the overlapping
campus-wide networks that any future candidate would recognize as an attractive
reason to join our community. Together these efforts are likely to address under
representation within campus units and support minority faculty already on
campus.
3. Invest in Advertising. We should develop very targeted information packets (and
on line materials) about cultural activities for various diverse groups (restaurants,
places of worship, schools, social activities, cultural programs, etc.) that include
highlighting the diversity of our campus (Pan-African Studies, Women Studies,
student organizations, minority scholarship programs, faculty research grant
opportunities, International Programs Office, and others). We should also
develop a protocol for incorporating this information into the scheduling of
candidate campus visits, perhaps including in those schedules time to drive
through area neighborhoods, meet with community and student leaders, and
arrange candidate contact with diverse groups on campus for candid conversation
about what it is really like to live and work at UA.
4. Invest Early. We should offer post-docs or other opportunities for advanced
doctoral candidates (ABD) to teach courses at UA with the goal of introducing
them to the campus early so they might consider applying here later. Then
develop protocols for maintaining that personal connection (faculty-to-faculty,
perhaps co-authoring research publications) to increase the likelihood that they
will seek a full-time, tenure track position here later. We recommend establishing
Post-Docs and/or ABD equivalents, with reduced teaching loads, dedicated to
supporting diverse hires. We recommend considering a complementary
orientation for minority faculty.
5
5. Invest in Set Asides. Although challenging, the goal is to succeed in attracting
talented and diverse faculty without setting aside positions. However, at least in
the short term, we recommend setting aside positions if we are serious about
attracting talented and diverse faculty. The university should set aside positions
and open these up to any department, and create a mechanism to ensure that we
use these to hire the most talented diverse faculty available. We should consider,
for instance, having the short list generated by any department seeking a set aside
hire reviewed by a subcommittee of the University Diversity Council. Such a
subcommittee should be composed of diverse faculty members, preferably faculty
whose research expertise focuses on racial or gender conflict, appointed by the
Chief Diversity Officer. This would have immediate and visible impact and if we
can sustain the effort for five years or more our campus would change for the
better rapidly. We know, for instance, that of all black faculty on campus today
more than 27% teach in Summit College and more than 22 % in the College of
Arts and Sciences, at least in part because these two colleges aggressively
responded to a previous presidential practice to make diverse faculty hiring a
priority by offering new positions to each Dean able to use existing lines to hire
an African-American faculty member. We recommend research to further
document the effectiveness of this previous practice.
6. Invest in an Endowment. Just as the university does for other high-priority
initiatives (landscape for learning, new stadium, current endowment drive) there
should be a directive to the Development Office to institute an equally vigorous
university-business-celebrity-government-philanthropist-Akron Public Schools
combined effort to raise the financial support needed to create incentives, special
academic programs, scholarships, study abroad opportunities, a spousal hiring
policy that includes non-academic positions at UA, outreach beyond NE Ohio,
expansion of the McNair Scholars Program, mentoring at all levels of educational
system, and any other components of this initiative that the UDC approves.
IV. Supporting and Retaining More Diverse Faculty
1. Invest in Counteroffers. When a diverse colleague earns the recognition that
comes with an external offer, there should be a reserve fund available to make the
competitive counteroffers necessary to retain high-quality diverse faculty.
2. Invest in Measuring What Matters. RTP criteria that respect and appreciate
unconventional areas of scholarship and service that reaches and addresses issues
of diversity and particularly recognizes the importance of honoring diverse ways
of knowing and knowledge production, teaching and learning.
3. Invest in Innovation. Establish faculty research, teaching and service networks
that support new ideas and ways of making meaningful contributions through
diverse interdisciplinary teams. Further, this could be accomplished by
supporting collaborations within and across disciplines and specialized units,
because interdisciplinary work is difficult to recognize in an institution organized
by disciplines.
4. Invest in Peer Mentoring to Build Relationships. Departments should examine
their willingness to mentor diverse junior colleagues into the profession. The
university should develop initiatives to assist diverse new faculty in their research
6
through the Faculty Research Committee and in their teaching through ITL.
Institutions that have minority faculty development programs like this are better
able to recruit—and then better able to retain—diverse faculty. We should ensure
that our efforts build on the best available research—another reason to ensure
faculty are driving the process—and that we learn from this research to ask our
diverse colleagues about how they experience The University of Akron, with
particular attention to developing peer mentors. Trained mentors can help new
colleagues face, confront, and deal with challenging issues related to diversity.
Mentors who are able to relate to new hires will make it more likely that we can
retain these diverse faculty members on campus. In addition the university should
establish regular mechanisms for acknowledging the valuable service provided by
those senior faculty members who invest their time and energy in mentoring new
faculty. These mentors should be encouraged to help new colleagues develop
individualized strategies to facilitate professional development that are attentive
to keeping committee work and student advising workloads from undermining
research and publication efforts.
5. Invest in a Culture of Accountability. We should keep a database of information
from prospective candidates on what they found most attractive and inviting about
The University of Akron and what they experienced as obstacles to choosing to
join our community. We recommend convening campus-wide and disciplinespecific workshops, through ITL or other relevant units, to demonstrate
institutional support for investing in a diverse campus culture. Our
recommendation that this subcommittee become a permanent advisory/advocacy
group in dialogue with Human Resources on developing internal capacity will
also support our recommendations regarding developing a culture of
accountability and a culture of inquiry. We recommend that the university find a
meaningful way to incorporate achieving the hiring goals here into the annual
review processes for Deans and Department Chairs, with appropriately specific
benchmarks.
6. Invest in a Culture of Inquiry. We should also do more than just keep a database.
We should develop an in-house capacity to study our own practices. When we
post a job advertisement, from where are the resumes collected? What
organizations, professional networks, databases and think tanks are most salient
for those running the search? Are the job requirements written in a way that is
overly narrow, thereby reducing the size of the qualified applicant pool within the
discipline or inadvertently privileging subfields in the discipline with the fewest
minority candidates? Are search committees as demographically diverse as
possible and are they reading application files in ways that recognize the value of
experiences and skills more likely to be part of a minority candidate’s file as
readily as they value those skills more likely to be found in a white candidate’s
file? If the university is serious about diversity and inclusive excellence, there
must be a commitment to work at identifying and removing barriers that hamper
the hiring and success of candidates of color. In an effort to develop inclusive
policy, there must be a commitment to the ongoing struggle to find and use
language in job advertisements, university policy, and other communications that
makes it clear that we value diversity. To seriously address questions like these
7
takes time and resources, but we have faculty with the expertise to do this type of
analysis if we are serious about figuring out how to attract and retain high-quality
minority colleagues.
7. Establish or enhance systems for generating feedback from faculty and staff about
the status of campus climate during exit interviews; develop and implement
policies and procedures that address general harassment and discrimination issues,
including strategies for responding to bias-motivated acts; review and enhance
diversity training programs designed for faculty and staff; increase participation in
training programs as educational tools for improving campus climate.
V. Supplemental Information
Bessent, H. (1997).Strategies for recruitment, retention, and graduation of minority
nurses in colleges of nursing. Washington, DC: American Nurses Publishing.
Provides a collection of chapters addressing problems, issues and solutions pertaining to
recruitment and retention, and graduation of minority nurses in Colleges of Nursing.
Selected attention is given to the need for increased minority faculty.
Joy James, ed. (1993).Spirit, Space, and Survival: African American Women in White
Academe. New York, Routledge,
Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy. (2008). The Black Academic's Guide to
Winning Tenure-Without Losing Your Soul. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner,.
Turner, Caroline Sotello Viernes, (2002). Diversifying the Faculty: A Guidebook for
Search Committees. Association of American Colleges and Universities.
White, Deborah Gray, ed. (2008).Telling Histories: Black Women Historians and the
Ivory Tower. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
The field of black women's history gained recognition as a legitimate field of study only
late in the twentieth century. Collecting stories that are both deeply personal and
powerfully political, Telling Histories compiles seventeen personal narratives by leading
black women historians at various stages in their careers. Their essays illuminate how-first as graduate students and then as professional historians--they entered and navigated
the realm of higher education, a world concerned with and dominated by whites and men.
In distinct voices and from different vantage points, the personal histories revealed here
also tell the story of the struggle to establish a new scholarly field.
Stanley, JM., Capers, CF., Berlin, LE. (2007) Changing the face of nursing faculty:
Minority faculty recruitment and retention. Journal of Professional Nursing, 23(5) 253261.
This article outlines the shortages in the nursing faculty workforce with emphasis on the
need for minority nurses. Numerous strategies are explained to facilitate success in
recruiting and retaining minority nursing faculty.
8
http://www.wwj.com/NSF-Grant-To-Boost-Faculty-Diversity-At-Michigan-T/2977786
This abstract outlines the manner in which nearly $500K from the National Science
Foundation be used to attract a larger, diverse pool of highly qualified applicants for
tenured and tenure-track faculty positions.
Posted September 18, 2008; accessed June 12, 2009
http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=7609
Provides action taken by the University of California, Davis to successfully hire more
women and people of color into faculty positions.
Posted May 19, 2000; accessed June 12, 2009
http://www.aps.org/programs/women/reports/bestpractices/qualified-faculty.cfm
Provides a list of best practice for hiring the most qualified women faculty
Accessed June 12, 2009
http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/users/nolan/WTGEA/strategies.html
Details specific strategies for increasing faculty diversity at the University of California,
Berkeley.
Posted 2001; accessed June 12, 2009
http://www.northwestern.edu/provost/faculty/best_practices.pdf
This article offers detailed information about best practices at Northwestern University
for recruiting and retaining minority and female faculty.
Posted May, 2004; accessed June 12, 2009.
http://www.ucop.edu/acadadv/fgsaa/documents/affirmative.pdf
This site holds the University of California Affirmative Action Guidelines for
Recruitment and Retention of Faculty which holds content on diverse faculty hires and
retention. The handbook is also available at
http://www.ucop.edu/acadadv/fgsaa/affirmative.html
http://www.rienner.com/title/The_Black_Academic_s_Guide_to_Winning_Tenure_With
out_Losing_Your_Soul
BlackAcademic.com-site of support for Under-Represented Faculty Making the
Transition From Graduate Student to Professor. Provides faculty coaching, forums, and
advice on how to win tenure. Co-founded by Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey
Laszloffy.
http://www.blackacademic.com/page/page/4503680.htm
American Historical Association. Committee on Minority Historians.
"Equity For Minority Historians in the Academic History Workplace: A Guide to Best
Practices."
http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0710/0710pro7.cfm
Inside Higher Ed Interview with Kerry Ann Rocquemore and Tracey Laszloffy. "The
Black Academic's Guide to Winning Tenure Without Losing Your Soul." August 8, 2008.
9
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/08/08/black
New Faculty Success-site provides professional development advice for underrepresented graduate students, post-docs, and faculty as to how to make the transition
from graduate school to being professor. Offers workshops, tele-workshops, and a
discussion forum.
http://www.newfacultysuccess.com/index.html
African American Professors Program-University of South Carolina.
The AAPP program is an initiative sponsored by the University of South Carolina, the
W.K. Kellog Foundation, and the South Carolina General Assembly to recruit and
prepare African American students to become college and university teachers. It
originated in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policies in USC's College of
Education
http://www.ed.sc.edu/aapp/
This site provides information about the African American Professor Program at the
University of South Carolina
Accessed June 12, 2009
Respectfully Submitted,
Subcommittee on Diverse Faculty Hiring
10