It Can Be Done. Do the Leg Work

Transcription

1 It Can Be Done We ve all heard the excuses: There aren t enough minority and female Ph.D. s in the pipeline The best candidates of color are snapped up by universities who can pay them more Race, gender and ethnicity aren t important; we re only concerned with getting the highest quality candidate. But the truth is, building a faculty that is not only excellent but that accurately reflects our larger society is possible, if not easy. Take it from those who have done it. Dr. Amy Donahue is a no-nonsense person with a can-do attitude. Nowhere is that more apparent than in her efforts to enrich the fabric of the public policy department she heads. This small department in an overwhelmingly male-dominated field now has a faculty comprised of 60% women. White men are now a minority in our department and they feel good about it, she laughs. Dr. Amy Donahue The public policy department trains students to work in government. The experience of minorities in government is quite different from that of white males. The experience of women in government is quite different from that of white males, Donahue explains. We want to be a diverse faculty because we want to push the field to be more diverse. We want to model that for our students. Do the Leg Work When asked how they do it, Donahue replies, There s no silver bullet. It s just leg work. Her department s recruitment strategies include reaching out to organizations that serve underrepresented populations, such as the National Forum for Black Public Administrators. Also, We try to put language in the ad that makes it clear that we care about these substantive areas, Donahue says. The standard equalopportunity legal language isn t enough. The department recently hired a candidate under the Faculty Excellence and Diversity Program (FEDP) a scholar who specializes in policy programs protecting single mothers. This candidate was identified to me by a colleague three years ago when she was just a promising student, Donahue relates. They watched her during that time to see if she would rise to the top of the candidate pool. Once she did, they approached her about the opening. When she was hired with FEDP funding, they were able to acquire a second professor who studies race and politics. You don t want them to be token, a checkmark in the diversity box, Donahue maintains. You want them to feel part of the department to be part of an agenda. These new faculty members help the department not only to model diversity, but to teach it explicitly, she adds. 1

2 You Have to Mean It Donahue credits part of her department s stunning success to support from the Provost and from Dr. Jeremy Teitelbaum, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS). Deans say these words all the time. He s not kidding, Donahue relates. Why does Teitelbaum have such a strong commitment to diversity? First of all, it s important as a basic question of social justice, he says. Secondly, We want the strongest, most intellectually diverse, most capable faculty we can recruit. To achieve that, we must be open to the broadest pool of candidates. To that end, Teitelbaum has undertaken a number of initiatives, including inviting dynamic, prominent experts to speak on diversity issues; paying for additional candidate interviews to broaden hiring pools; clarifying employment policies; and establishing the ALTERR committee (Academic Leadership Team for Effective Recruiting and Retention). Dr. Jeremy Teitelbaum Use the Resources Available to You ALTERR was formed in the fall of 2010 when Teitelbaum charged six respected faculty members from CLAS with conducting research on best practices for excellence in faculty hiring, including diversifying the faculty. The group shared their extensive research by giving talks 29 in all to the search committees in CLAS departments last fall and developing a helpful website ( and training presentation. We re not trying to tell you what to do. We re trying to excite your imaginations about what you might be able to do, says Dr. Felicia Pratto, professor of psychology and chair of ALTERR. Dr. Felicia Pratto The website includes a bibliography of research on implicit biases in the hiring process, such as a finding that groups stereotyped as competent (e.g., white males) do not have to perform as well as members of other groups to be judged competent. A lot of Americans don t mean to be biased, Pratto contends, but there s still some bias going on. If we know about (these biases), we can do something about them. According to Pratto, the committee discovered that different disciplines have different norms when it comes to hiring practices. In some fields, for example, it is common procedure to go to conferences and interview potential candidates in a hotel suite a practice with which many women may not be comfortable. The website also offers information about work-life resources to help new and potential faculty feel comfortable and welcomed in Storrs. It sends the message that you will not be the only Muslim, the only Jew, the only person who likes blues in town, Pratto says. 2

3 Those resources can be helpful in attracting faculty who are used to more diverse settings. After all, it s not just the name of the university that will draw people, says Dr. Rigoberto Lopez, head of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. They have to feel comfortable in the institution. Cast a Wide Net Dr. Rigoberto Lopez Teaching Cultural Competence Lopez himself heads a diverse department, with more than half of its faculty from underrepresented groups and about one-third women. When it comes to hiring, he says the department casts a wide net, recruiting from all over country and the world, including minority associations and international organizations. Some departments tend to hire more people like themselves. We want to hire people who are better than we are. Otherwise we won t make progress, Lopez claims. The School of Social Work, headed by Dean Salome Raheim, also boasts a diverse faculty fitting for a field that serves a diverse society. The school is charged with teaching its students culturally competent practice the ability to work with a wide range of human differences. Raheim takes that charge seriously. We re preparing students at UConn to work in a very diverse and global workplace, she says. The people they come in contact with must reflect the world they are going to work in. A faculty without diversity, Raheim continues, is sending students the wrong message that people who are going to be successful, who have something to offer you, are people from this limited group. Co-chair of the Provost s Commission on Institutional Diversity with Jeremy Teitelbaum, and the first to implement the university s FEDP policy, Raheim is a tireless champion of diversity. And by diversity, she is careful to explain, she means all types of diversity Dean Salome Raheim intellectual diversity, racial/ethnic/gender diversity, as well as inclusion of individuals with disabilities and social identities that are marginalized, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered individuals. For those serious about diversity work, Raheim offers this advice: First, build an academic excellence case for diversity. One of our major goals is production of knowledge. That s what faculty do, Raheim explains. The scholarship that s produced is richer if it is done by people coming at subjects from a variety of perspectives. Next, develop a clear diversity recruitment plan. Don t leave it to chance, she insists. When it comes to hiring, it s not enough to put an ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education if you want a diverse pool. Raheim recommends accessing listservs and professional networks that target diverse populations. It s a way of sending a message that says, We want you. We re interested in the work you do. 3

4 The last part of the process is getting people to come here, Raheim says. The many cultural centers and organizations for underrepresented students and faculty on campus send the message that the university welcomes a diverse population. Feeding the Pipeline Unlike social work, whose faculty closely mirrors society at large, fields like engineering face a unique challenge in recruiting female faculty. Nationwide, women earned just under 22% of engineering doctoral degrees awarded in 2008, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF). Only 4% of women with engineering doctorates worked full-time in academia as of 2006, NSF statistics further show. Bolstering the ranks of female faculty is especially difficult in engineering, given the small numbers of women doctoral candidates and the even smaller number of those candidates who go on to become professors. Dr. Mun Y. Choi, Dean of the School of Engineering, readily acknowledges the challenge. He is leading the charge to welcome more women--not only into the UConn School of Engineering, but into the field as a whole. Dr. Mun Y. Choi We have a variety of outreach and engagement activities aimed at introducing young women to engineering as an exciting profession in which they can make an enormous difference in people s lives, Choi relates. These programs expose girls in middle school and high school to women engineers as role models and to fun and challenging handson science activities. Dr. Leslie Shor, a tenure-track professor in the Department of Chemical Materials and Biomolecular Engineering, notes that women are drawn to fields where societal benefits are more apparent. What many people don t realize, she points out, is that engineers have the potential to help just as many people as doctors, if not more. Dr. Baki Cetegen We re feeding the pipeline, acknowledges Dr. Baki Cetegen, Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, but it may take a while to Dr. Baki Cetegen pay off. Cetegen also supports establishing a Dr. Leslie Shor formal spousal hiring policy as a means of bringing in more female faculty members. A higher percentage of women have professional or academic spouses. Helping those spouses find work at the university or in the area might be a draw for women faculty, he says. Exhausting and Lonely I ve been the only woman in a lot of organizations, says Dr. Donahue, the army, the fire department. It s exhausting. It gets very lonely. 4

5 Those sentiments are echoed by another female faculty member in a largely male discipline who frequently finds herself the only woman in the room. Though her male colleagues are very supportive, she says, they are sometimes a little unaware. She often feels compelled to speak as the representative of all of femalehood. Dr. Jeffrey Ogbar, Associate Dean for Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, mentions that minority faculty members are also more likely to be asked to advise students and student organizations because they are one of few representatives of their groups. I ve been adviser to several, he says. Some faculty have been here for 30 years and haven t been advisers to any. Dr. Jeffrey Ogbar Similarly, Shor gets requests to supervise student research all the time--almost exclusively from females. She is quick to add, however, that her department head is very good about protecting her from service projects. A more diverse faculty can make life easier for professors in underrepresented groups, but its significance doesn t stop there. Shor points out that diversity--particularly in her field--has implications for our global future. Having a more varied and representative faculty may change the way society sees engineers. As more of the best minds go into the field, it will allow us to solve more of the world s problems, she predicts. It Takes Time Keep at It Achieving greater diversity can have a powerful impact on the future of the university and the world beyond, but it won t happen overnight. Any change has to happen over the course of years, according to Dean Teitelbaum. No one knows this better than Dr. Ronald Taylor, former Vice Provost for Multicultural Affairs and Director of the African American Studies Institute. Now retired, Taylor spent a good part of his career at UConn trying to identify practices that make a real difference. Not the least of these, Taylor says, is that university leaders must send the message that diversity is important. Faculty are a skeptical bunch, he says. They re not impressed by a lot of talk and no action. Much like Teitelbaum does today, Taylor held luncheons a few times a year with inspirational speakers on the topic of diversity. Phil Austin, President at that time, was the first to show up. He sent the signal that This is important to me. It ought to be important to you, Taylor recalls. Taylor also points to institutions such as the University of Washington as models of Dr. Ronald Taylor successful diversity plans. Why do they produce so many African American doctorates? Because they made it a priority, he insists. That university garnered a reputation as a welcoming and supportive place for underrepresented groups. More and more individuals from those groups were drawn there. Diversity attracts diversity. One of the things we need to do is create a process that eventually becomes self-sustaining, Taylor counsels. 5

6 Taylor also shares one more piece of advice. Just because there is a Division of Diversity and Equity at UConn, he warns, faculty members shouldn t assume that there is somebody doing this, so I don t have to. That office has no power or authority to approve faculty hires, he points out. Dana McGee, Associate Vice President for Diversity and Equity, agrees. The only people who have the power to diversify the faculty are the faculty themselves, she says. I do think we re heading in the right direction, Taylor shares with hard-won perspective, but there s a lot more to be done. The good news is.it Can Be Done! 6