2 New Diversity Deans Take On Ivy League Challenges

Michael Marsland, Yale U.

This week two Ivy League institutions announced high-profile appointments designed to tackle diversity challenges on their campuses. At Yale University, Kathryn Lofton will become the inaugural deputy dean for diversity and faculty development in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. At Princeton University, LaTanya N. Buck will become dean for diversity and inclusion, with a focus on students.

A New Role for Deans

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As chair of the religious-studies department at Yale, Ms. Lofton brings with her intimate knowledge of how the faculty operates. Ms. Buck is coming from Washington University in St. Louis, where she worked closely with students in creating the Center for Diversity and Inclusion, of which she is the founding director.

Both enter their new jobs well aware, they say, that there’s no such thing as quick wins when it comes to the complex topics of diversity and inclusion. What they’re after, they say, are deeper structural changes and improvements in the campus climate. But before they can propose solutions, they say, they plan to spend their first few months listening.

A ‘Serious Situation’ at Yale

At Yale, Ms. Lofton has her work cut out for her. Within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, just 7.3 percent of tenured professors and full-time junior faculty members on the tenure track are members of underrepresented groups. She calls it a “serious situation,” without an easy resolution.

“I have not met a single scholar at Yale who has not thought about this question,” she says. “The problem is you hit a structural wall and it falls apart.”

Ms. Lofton, whose charge includes an examination of recruitment, retention, and mentorship support, has two goals. The first is to come up with best practices that Yale can adopt. The second is to get people to think about their work in a different way.

In hiring, she says, scholars often default to replicating what they’ve already done. But what if when reviewing applications, they come across someone who is approaching their field in a radically different way? Will members of the search committee discard the application because it doesn’t fit the job description, or are they willing to broaden their search?

How can Yale, she asks, design searches that draw in the most diverse and innovative candidates, while maintaining excellence in established fields of research? “This is a collective effort,” she says. “But I do think the purpose of this job is an enormous level of precinct work. To meet with every chair of every program to ask them how I can help.”

Her work will also include talking to people who have left Yale. Of 86 professors hired from underrepresented groups between 2006 and 2011, half are no longer there. While Yale, like all elite institutions, demands a great deal from its faculty, she says, it can do a better job of making people feel supported, not isolated. “That’s a culture change that’s not just about diversity,” she says.

Discontent at Princeton

Washington U

At Princeton, Ms. Buck will be entering a campus in which black students have made clear their unhappiness with the rate of progress. Last fall, members of the Black Justice League staged a sit-in in the president’s office, issuing a list of demands that included removing Woodrow Wilson’s name from the university’s public-policy school and requiring cultural-competency training for faculty and staff members. The university ultimately declined the name change, but has put in place other plans to diversify the campus and make it a more welcoming place. Part of that plan was to create Ms. Buck’s position.

Ms. Buck says her first job is to begin talking with students to find out what their experiences and interests are. “For me, this is my professional style,” she says. “It’s very important for me to do a listening tour and meet with various individuals across the institution.”

She wants to find ways to better connect the three centers that will come under her supervision: the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding; the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Center; and the Women’s Center. She also wants to get students to think about diversity and inclusion beyond the first-year experience, and develop more support mechanisms for students, particular low-income students.

Sustaining Momentum

Certainly Ms. Buck and Ms. Lofton are not the first to attempt structural and cultural changes on their campuses in order to achieve greater diversity. Studying those and other initiatives has made a skeptic of William B. Harvey, a distinguished scholar at the American Association for Access, Equity, and Diversity. Too often, he says, colleges fail to make noticeable changes because diversity officers are given neither resources nor top-down support. And he says that unless positions like these — focused specifically on students and faculty members — are linked into a broader campus diversity efforts, they won’t be able to sustain momentum.

“It’s a great opportunity under the right circumstances to help an institution introduce change,” Mr. Harvey says. But “you push hard and all of a sudden the degree of support you thought you had begins to evaporate.”

Both new deans say they expect to come up with concrete proposals by the end of their first year in the position (Ms. Buck doesn’t start until August).

Ms. Lofton, who is a special adviser to Yale’s president and reports directly to the dean of the Faculty and Arts and Sciences, will begin with a comparative analysis of 12 peer institutions, she says, to study both successful and unsuccessful models of faculty diversity and inclusion. That research, combined with “lots and lots of conversations” on the campus, she says, will result in a series of recommendations. Her term in the position ends after a year and a half, so she is aware she has a tight deadline.

Ms. Buck will report to Princeton’s vice president for campus life and become part of a group of senior diversity practitioners, both of which will give her the ear of senior administrators. She says she was convinced Princeton is serious about those issues in part because the university has put more money into diversity efforts in recent years, including more programs to enroll underrepresented students.

“There’s a strong core group of individuals who are willing to work collaboratively to push this agenda forward,” she says. “To me it’s clear and apparent things are happening.”

Beth McMurtrie writes about campus culture, among other things. Follow her on Twitter @bethmcmurtrie, or email her at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.