Recruiting and retaining a diverse faculty has been a long-standing challenge for many higher education institutions. How do we assess hiring policies and practices? How important is implicit bias training? What can we do to prevent toxic work environments? With COVID-19 making the climate much more difficult to navigate, we are now faced with an onset of new recruitment and retention issues to tackle on top of pre-existing ones.
Tune into this panel discussion which took place in January during the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) 2021 Annual Meeting with moderator Dr. Jamal Watson and higher ed leaders from around the country as they discuss specific guidelines and strategies to help ensure that institutions continue and improve diversity recruitment efforts for faculty.
KEY POINTS / MAIN TAKEAWAYS:
- How can higher education institutions be more creative in recruiting a diverse applicant pool?
- Thoughts on retaining graduate students in higher education institutions.
- The importance of assessing and understanding the cultures within our institutions to ensure retention.
- How do we tackle toxic environments in higher education institutions?
- How do we recruit and retain faculty of color?
- Specific things we can do to help faculty hiring committees.
- How can we be transparent with junior underrepresented minority faculties doing DEI-related service about promotions?
QUOTABLES:
“The goal is where you’re cultivating those people to be familiar with you to even consider your discipline. And we have to do that work and that investment, and then pay it forward in our fields, rather than complaining about the small pool.”
“It’s our job in graduate school to introduce our students and faculty to the pathways beyond the professoriate and give them the essential tools to be successful, and not to shame people when they don’t want to go the faculty pathway.”
“There is no one size fits all. And so when I think about retention, we have to think more about the context of our individual institutions and our departments and our schools. Because when we don’t do that, we might try to implement something at a small single-sex institution that Michigan State did.”
PRODUCTS / RESOURCES MENTIONED:
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