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Tips for Recruiting A
Diverse Faculty
(12/18/01)
PREPARATION
- Review
the job description to ensure that it accurately reflects the duties
and responsibilities for the position, and the minimum and preferred
qualifications. Analyze
whether the qualifications are inclusive as opposed to exclusionary,
and whether they could be modified to incorporate a less traditional
perspective.
ENLARGING
THE POOL
- Write
directly to colleagues to request nominations of minority and women
candidates.
- Write
to historically Black, predominantly Latino, and tribal colleges and
universities to secure lists of faculty in various disciplines and
doctoral students graduating.
- Write
to minorities and women one year prior to their completion of a
Ph.D. or Ed.D. programs to inform them of upcoming job openings.
Letters should clearly state needs and interests of the program and
be followed up by telephones calls.
- Consider
women and minorities who have performed successfully as lecturers,
instructors, or research associates in the department and at other
institutions
- Use
the visiting scholar program to create opportunities for women and
minorities. This
contact may pave the way for recruitment to a regular
tenure‑tract position.
- Write
position postings to ensure that they attract the widest possible
range of candidates. For example, a labor history position might be
written to indicate a specialty in labor and/or women's history. An
urban sociology position might include familiarity with urban
minority groups as one of its desired qualifications.
- Follow
up contacts at professional meetings with recruitment letters that
describe your department and demonstrate interest in an individual's
candidacy for faculty positions.
- Contact
women and minorities directly to inform them of vacancies or
anticipated vacancies and invite their application, as opposed to
sending a letter to a school asking that they communicate the
vacancy to potential women and minority candidates. Often,
outstanding potential candidates do not apply for advertised
positions; a member of the search committee must approach them. If
an individual declines a nomination or does not respond to your
letter of inquiry, you should telephone the person to determine if
the reasons for declining can be addressed and resolved. A telephone
call will help demonstrate to a potential candidate that the
University of Arizona is serious about its efforts to have a diverse
faculty.
- Consider
a faculty exchange program with a historically Black/Hispanic
College or tribal college. Consider cooperative working arrangements
with such institutions.
- Attend
and encourage other faculty who will be attending conferences,
particularly ones that attract large numbers of women and minority
faculty, to combine your visits with recruitment efforts for present
and future positions.
- Send
small teams of faculty, students, and administrators for visits to
campuses where potential minority and women students/applicants
reside.
- Keep
resumes of prospective candidates on file and contact them when a
recruitment begins.
- Search
for senior scholars who may be employed outside of academe but who,
through cutbacks or simply the desire for a career change, may be
well suited to a faculty position.
- Contact
women and minorities who have received significant grants or
professional recognition and ask for the names of promising women
and minority scholars.
- Maintain
contact with women and minorities whom your unit has unsuccessfully
attempted to recruit for graduate study at the University of
Arizona. As they complete their graduate studies at other
universities, they may become candidates for a faculty position at
the University of Arizona. They may also have women and minorities
among their colleagues who are potential candidates for open
positions.
RECRUITING
CANDIDATES
- Recognize
that women and minorities need to be aggressively recruited as well.
Competition is intense and candidates must be recruited as
you would any other outstanding candidate.
- Women
and minority faculty must also feel that they will be truly welcome
at the institution; that they will find a place in the university
community. Encourage other faculty, including other minority/women
faculty to meet informally with candidates to give them a sense of
the institution. It also helps if deans and other academic
administrators make themselves available to meet with minority and
women candidates during the recruitment process.
SCREENING CANDIDATES
- Resist
the impulse to label one or more candidates the "most
promising" because this may make it difficult for other
candidates to be fully considered.
- Do
not make assumptions about candidates. Assumptions that a member of
a particular racial group would not feel welcome in the community,
that a woman who pursued her degree part‑time is not a serious
scholar, that a military background would make one less acceptable
in the classroom or as a colleague, concluding that an individual
who looks like an excellent candidate will be heavily recruited and,
therefore, make no effort to recruit them, are all damaging to the
candidates and will work against our diversity efforts. Also, do not
make assumptions about a person's willingness to move, their
spouse/partner's willingness to move, etc. Let candidates decide
these issues for themselves.
- Committee
members need to continually examine whether their judgments on a
dissertation, a person's character, experience, or publications, is
being affected by subjective factors, stereotypes, or other
assumptions.
- Resist
the tendency to measure individuals and their credentials against
one standard. Candidates who received their degrees later in life,
who worked part‑time when their children were young, or whose
teaching and publication experience is not "mainstream"
may bring rich experiences and diverse backgrounds to the campus.
- Think
about the new dimensions that diverse candidates will bring to the
department.
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