Exploring best practices for building and retaining a diverse faculty

Higher education leaders say the pandemic has changed the way institutions deal with faculty recruitment. Zoom interviews or other virtual connections have become commonplace. The desire to build more diverse faculties has grown over the past two and a half years as colleges and universities have recognized the need to connect with students who have felt disconnected and to bring more complex and inclusive thought to higher education.

Dr. Lisa Hanasono“To successfully build greater faculty diversity, I recommend proactively creating a critical mass of minority scholars and cultivating broader communities of care,” says Dr. Lisa Hanasono, director of learning and content at the National Center for the Advancement of Faculty and Diversity (NCFDD), a provider of professional development in higher education.

“From campus-wide mentoring and affinity groups to faculty development training with pathway programs and equitable workload policies, colleges and universities can explore how they create and maintain cultures and climates that attract and support the success of underrepresented faculty,” says Hanasono.

Recruitment strategies

“Institutions may want to consider how they proactively recruit job candidates,” says Hanasono. “Colleges and universities can create job postings that go beyond basic boilerplate language. Instead of simply informing the public about a job opening, we can transform a job ad into a strategic recruiting tool that aims to convince candidates to apply.”

St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, recently moved to a new campus. Dr. Jennifer Lancaster, vice president for academic affairs and academic dean, says transforming the campus involves more than a new location and state-of-the-art technology.

“There’s a lot of flexibility and technology-enhanced learning that I think is attractive to a lot of new educators,” Lancaster says. “When we explain our overall learning strategy and the different modalities in which we offer courses, the ability to create new courses and new programs attracts applicants.”

Being able to do some interviews via Zoom has proven to be quite cost effective. St. Francis also uses a platform where candidates record their answers to a series of questions and upload the video. The top two or three applicants are then brought to campus for personal interviews.

Heidi L. Foster-Cho, director of human resources for academic affairs at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, says the university continues to do initial screening interviews virtually because they are easier to coordinate and make financial sense. Final candidates are conducted on campus. These candidates not only hold meetings and tour campus, but also guest lecture in class so that the hiring committee gets a feel for what the person is like in the classroom.

Recruitment strategies at Sacred Heart reflect a desire to increase faculty diversity. In addition to posting positions on the university’s website and with higher education publications, Foster-Cho encourages search committees to reach out to minority-serving institutions.

“I encourage them to reach out to colleagues they may know in the field who may have taught students who now have Ph.D. and are ready for a career as a faculty member,” says Foster-Cho.

Since joining Saint Francis in 2021, Dr. Jeanne Arnold, chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer and chief of staff, has implemented a training program for faculty search committees.

“It covers everything from how you write the ad, developing the recruiting plan, being proactive, not just putting out ads, but reaching out to schools or places that produce the people we want,” Arnold says. “We require them to develop rubrics so that the assessment is consistent and objective.”

Dr. Kathryn Chan, assistant vice chancellor for high-impact practices at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that circulating job listings involves thinking about different and unconventional ways to reach applicants. “People are now using other ways, including networks that are set up by professional organizations or even professional conferences, to reach out to … people from different backgrounds when there is a viable, diverse group to consider,” she says.

Sometimes, Chan says, deans will attend conferences to establish relationships they can later use. Hosting events for various candidates on campus increased before the pandemic. Since then, schools have had to adapt and innovate, sometimes hosting virtual information sessions.

Institutional commitment

Foster-Cho meets with all faculty search committees in the early stages of the search and conducts training on how to build a search group and prevent implicit bias. She encourages them to reach out and not just settle for people responding to advertising posts.

Dr. Jeanne Arnold“[Institutions] they need to adapt by being more flexible in a variety of ways, including salary offers, workplace flexibility and in some cases accommodating dual-career families, which is becoming more common,” says Chan.

NCFDD’s mission is to change the face of power in the academy. The organization currently works with over 300 colleges and universities for best practices, as well as thousands of individuals seeking professional development. Hanasono says that while facilitating a faculty development workshop for black and Latino STEM scholars, several participants said they looked into whether an institution was looking for inclusive resources, such as the NCFDD.

Hanasono agrees with practices such as building partnerships with professional organizations and institutions that serve minority scholars. “I believe that faculty recruitment is closely related to the processes, policies, practices and resources associated with faculty retention and career advancement,” she says.

“Job applicants are often drawn to higher education institutions where they feel welcome, valued and know they can advance their careers,” she adds. “Finding ways to strategically align recruitment, retention, and career development efforts can help colleges and universities build a more diverse faculty.”

The efforts of St. Francis College to recruit more diverse faculty has accelerated since 2020. This includes developing one’s own pipeline from the college’s diverse student body by attracting students to graduate school. It is among the priorities in the college’s STEM Resource Center.

“I introduced a pilot project with [president’s] cabinet, personal professional development tool around cultural competency, cross-cultural development checklist,” says Arnold. “It’s a personal exploration that people do. Based on the information they enter, they will receive a feedback report on where they are in developing their own cultural competence.

“It also provides a blueprint for how you can expose yourself to different things and engage in different activities to move up that scale,” she continues. “It can really give a person insight and help them be more effective in the classroom, with colleagues, and in searches.”

Support systems

“We believe institutions are part of the change by continually evaluating how they support their diverse faculty on a professional and personal level,” says Hanasono. “The pandemic has exacerbated many inequities in academia, and there remains an urgent and important need to continue to intentionally, proactively, and inclusively recruit and support minority students, doctoral students, faculty, and administrators.”

Technological knowledge is becoming increasingly important for new teachers. Lancaster says St. Francis wants people who have at least some experience implementing technology in their pedagogy. They don’t have to be fully experienced, but they should be comfortable learning.

Chan notes that a lack of technical skills can be a disadvantage given the current trend toward hybrid and online learning, and the job description needs to be explicit. This will include the types of courses a faculty member is expected to teach.

“This is related to faculty retention, as HEIs now need to look at support once faculty are hired and for those already in place,” Chan says. “Additional attention must be paid to faculty members … because the needs of students and institutions have changed.

“Let’s make sure everyone has the tools to use virtual platforms,” ​​she adds. “As well as having someone on-site in real-time to offer technology support is important.”

To keep faculty on track for tenure, St. Francis has a pre-tenure review when faculty are in their third year. There will be meetings and evaluations of where the administration thinks the faculty members are in regards to the portfolio process. There is also a post-tenure review process every five years. In any given year, those facing post-tenure evaluation can form a peer group called a Faculty Evaluation and Enrichment Committee, who meet, attend each other’s classes, and write a collective report on their experiences, as well as suggestions for faculty seminars.

“As we continue to diversify our faculty as a whole, it will be an increasingly better process to retain all of our faculty after tenure,” says Lancaster.

Arnold says there needs to be a comprehensive survey of the climate among faculty, staff and students. St. Francis launched a climate study on Sept. 20 for which outside consultants were brought in.