1. Preparing the Search
Diverse Search Committee
An effort should be made to create a diverse search committee that could include RTPC faculty, staff, students, and tenure-track faculty. In composing a committee, remember to:
Be Wary
Be wary of allowing seniority and availability to overdetermine membership selection.
Commitment to Diversity
Try to include members who have a demonstrated commitment to diversity.
Experiences and Perspectives
Focus on bringing together a group that has different experiences and perspectives.
Challenge Assumptions
Encourage the cultivation of an environment within the committee in which members can respectfully and comfortably challenge one another’s assumptions.
Minoritized Community Members
Try to include women and minoritized community members on search committees, but recognize that these community members often receive inordinate service requests. So, consider lightening their service load.
Other Departments
Consider inviting faculty members from other departments to increase diversity without overtaxing your department’s women and minoritized faculty members if your department is small.
Inclusive Search Training
Search committees must complete inclusive search training provided by the Office of Inclusion and Diversity before finalizing their position description. This synchronous training takes approximately 90 minutes to complete and can be requested by contacting the Associate CIDO for Faculty and Staff Success at cido@usc.edu.
Don’t end your consideration of bias after completing your training!
Consider devoting your first committee meeting to discussing each other’s understanding of implicit bias and how to run your sessions inclusively and equitably. Committees can obtain this support by contacting the Associate CIDO for Faculty and Staff Success at cido@usc.edu.
Examine patterns of previous searches in your unit. Your history of faculty hiring can provide valuable insights before beginning the search. Key questions here include:
Previous Applicants
How many members of diverse populations have applied for positions in your department in previous searches as a percentage of the entire applicant pool?
Diverse Populations
How many members of diverse populations has your department/program brought to campus for interviews in past searches?
Previous Strategies
If your department/program has hired members of diverse groups, what strategies did search committees use to bring about these outcomes?
Decision Making
If members of diverse groups have turned down positions in your department/ program, what reasons did they give for their decision?
Evaluation Systems
If your department has yet to make any offers to members of diverse populations, consider changing your existing evaluation systems so they can better assess the strengths of all potential candidates.
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?
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.
Define the position as broadly as possible while remaining within departmental/program needs.
Consider creating a position in an area of specialty that tends to attract diverse graduate students.
Agree on specific and measurable skills and experiences that are directly related to the position while casting a wide net.
Determine how each measurable skill/experience you conceive will impact the search and decide if that impact is acceptable relative to broader needs.
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.
Search 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.