Resources
Appendix 1: Building a Pathway
Overview
Once you have created marketing material for your program, consider developing a pathway relationship with affinity groups in your academic discipline or institutions producing diverse doctoral students in your field or professionals for staff hires. Developing productive relationships with a school or affinity group (i.e., creating an academic diversity pathway) takes time and cultivation. Still, it can benefit colleges and universities seeking to diversify their faculty and staff.
Identifying Potential Partners
Potential partners include Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), Native American/Tribal Colleges, and professional organizations. There are 105 HCBUs in the United States, concentrated primarily on the East Coast. They comprise three percent of all colleges and universities in the US but produce sixteen percent of the country’s African-American graduates. HSIs represent six percent of US post-secondary institutions but enroll fifty percent of all Latinx students. California, Texas, Florida, and New Mexico are the highest-producing areas for Latinx faculty and staff candidates. Please see Appendix 2, “Using IPEDS,” to learn how to identify colleges and universities producing diverse candidates in your field.
Identifying affinity groups gives you another place to start sharing job postings or making recruitment efforts. Professional organizations are only a starting point, however. Your next step is to execute a basic internet search. When searching for affinity groups in your discipline, it is essential to cast a broad net but use precise terms (e.g., Blacks in Sociology, Queer Classicists, Minorities in STEM). Remember to alternate search terms (e.g., “Black” and “African American;” “Hispanic” and “Latinx,” “Mexican,” “Puerto Rican,” or “Dominican”). Using specific terms and crossing your search with as many identifiers as possible might yield better results. Your attempt to find affinity groups will be incomplete without doing similar searches on a broad range of social media platforms. Each may connect you to a different audience.
Steps in Growing a Diversity Pipeline
“Would you be receptive to…”
Upon identifying a program or affinity group, reach out to relevant contacts. For staff searches, consider directors of career services and academic advisors. Consider graduate school deans and department chairs for non-tenure track faculty or assistant professor searches. Ask if they would be receptive to learning more about your program and your desire to grow your diversity. Use your current search as a way to begin this conversation.
Send Academic Material to Potential Partners
Keep your materials simple
- No long paragraphs.
- Create separate brochures for different topic areas to the extent appropriate for you. For example, a large department may have various areas of excellence.
- When considering the amount of content (digitally or materially), think of a postcard, not a brochure.
- Include two different points of contact in your unit.
- Consider your institution’s brand and be consistent with it.
- Photos are great, but don’t use pictures that portray a false image of your unit.
- Refrain from including a description of the job you are currently hiring for. Create an “institution snapshot” and embed a link to your opening. Candidates interested in your institution are more likely to apply for a position.
Institutional Snapshot:
“Founded in 1848, Rhodes College is a highly selective, private, residential undergraduate college in Memphis, Tennessee. We aspire to graduate students with a lifelong passion for learning, a compassion for others, and the ability to translate academic study and personal concern into effective leadership and action in their communities and the world. We encourage applications from candidates interested in helping us achieve this vision. Rhodes College values an inclusive and welcoming environment. We are an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity in the workforce. Memphis has a population of over one million and is the nation’s 19th-largest city. The city provides multiple opportunities for research and cultural and recreational activities. Read more about Memphis at http://www.rhodes.edu/”
Invitation and Coordination
Invite representatives from the potential partner to meet and learn more about your unit. Traditionally, this would have been done with an on-ground visit, including a tour and speaking with folks from your team. In a cost-prohibitive environment, however, Zoom provides a cost-effective manner of achieving the same goal.
Highlight the Precedent
When you get a hire (and you will!), let your hire be an ambassador to the institution or affinity group from whence they were recruited. This is most appropriate for hiring staff or faculty from undergraduate or graduate programs or affinity group recruitment efforts.
Reinforcement
Each hire allows you to reach out to a new set of potential partners. Keep a database of whom you have interacted with and regularly communicate with them regarding your program to demonstrate your commitment to a long-term relationship that benefits your unit and their constituents.
Consistent with the metaphor of cultivation, building these networks takes time, and a unit should consider this ongoing work. With each new search, try reaching out to seven new potential partners–a combination of HSIs, HCBUs, and affinity groups. Once a strong relationship with a partner begins, it can be a consistent source of diverse candidates for the unit that started the partnership and other departments across the university!
The Position Description
In Best Practices for Faculty Search Committees, Jeffrey Buller writes, “Successful diversity efforts begin with the design of the position.” Given the importance of diversity for executing the highest quality research and providing our students with the highest quality educational experience, all positions should include a diversity (not identity) paradigm in the job description (see Appendix 3: A Diversity Enriched Position Description). How can we do that?
Essential Requirements Only
List only requirements that are unquestionably indispensable for the duties of the position. For example, posts often require a Ph.D. when other terminal degrees or professional experience would be appropriate.
Specific Measurable Skills
Agree on specific and measurable skills and experiences that are directly related to the position while casting a wide net.
Broad Position Definition
Define the position as broadly as possible while remaining within departmental/program needs.
Impact Analysis
Determine how each measurable skill/experience you conceive will impact the search and decide if that impact is acceptable relative to broader needs.
Specialty for Diversity
Consider creating a position in an area of specialty that tends to attract diverse graduate students.
Damon Williams and Kristina Wade Golden suggest avoiding a narrow definition of merit that focuses solely on scholarship, noting that a “position description might include demonstrating the ability to work with and mentor diverse students and colleagues, understanding retention issues in higher education, and possessing a variety of teaching methods or curricular perspectives that embrace interdisciplinary research.”
Screening Criteria
Writing the position description provides an opportune moment to develop screening criteria. Indeed, the search committee should develop very explicit and detailed screening criteria that connect directly to the position description long before receiving applications. Because research has shown that we tend to favor people that we “like” and then adjust selection criteria afterward to those to whom we are partial committees should:
- Avoid vague and unspecified standards.
- Avoid relying on proxies for evaluating value, such as an institution’s status or an advisor’s reputation.
- Develop clear-cut and explicit practices regarding conflict of interest and potential nepotism within your search committee.
- Please see the University Conflict of Interest and Commitment Policy, particularly item four, for guidance on what constitutes a conflict of interest.
Thus, consider adding some of the following as essential selection criteria for all candidates:
- Teaching: A background in pedagogical approaches that boost the advancement of underrepresented students.
- Research and Creative Work: Scholarship that promotes access and equity.
- Professional Activities: Efforts to advance minoritized groups in the candidate’s field.
- Service: Experience promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, such as recruitment, retention, and mentoring of underrepresented or minoritized faculty, staff, and students.
In addition to adding these to the committee’s selection criteria, including them under “highly desirable qualifications in the job description communicates to potential applicants that their work in diversity, equity, and inclusion would be valued here and establishes consistent expectations throughout the hiring process.