While the number of new hires has decreased in the COVID-19 era, the vision of more diverse and inclusive faculty remains decisive.
It goes without saying that COVID-19 has impacted all areas of higher education, but those involved in the recruitment and retention of diverse faculty remain committed and are finding creative ways to achieve their objective.
“The current crisis requires us to be nimble and flexible to pull these initiatives off,” says Dr. Zulema Valdez, associate vice provost for the faculty and professor of sociology at University of California, Merced (UCM). “We have had to accept the challenge and recognize that we might have to temper our expectations a bit, but it doesn’t mean we can’t provide a valuable resource and foster a sense of community, albeit one that exists almost entirely online for the foreseeable future.”
Recruiting practices
UCM benefits from efforts created for the University of California (UC) system as a whole. Upon recognizing that its institutions needed to do a better job of recruiting and retaining diverse faculty, the UC Office of the President provided funds to support equity, diversity and inclusive hiring initiatives. Among these is having a faculty equity advisor (FEA) program on most campuses.
“The FEA program at UC Merced identifies at least one FEA per school — engineering, natural sciences and social sciences, humanities and arts — who is charged with overseeing issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) throughout the faculty search process for every authorized faculty search on campus, starting with job ad language,” says Valdez.
