Like the country in general, faculty members at American colleges have become more ethnically and racially diverse over the past two decades. Eighty-five percent of full-time and part-time faculty members at all colleges in 1993 were white; by 2013, the latest year for which national data are available, that figure had fallen to 72 percent. Even so, academe doesn’t yet mirror the U.S. population, which was 63 percent white in 2013.
Diversifying the faculty remains a challenge particularly at liberal-arts colleges. They are typically in rural settings or located outside major cities, areas that are often racially and ethnically homogenous, notes the Consortium for Faculty Diversity in Liberal Arts Colleges. They also usually hire academics who have experience at other liberal-arts colleges. The job candidates are usually white and come from upper-class backgrounds, some administrators say.
THE PROBLEM
Lack of faculty diversity
In 2011, when Beau Breslin became dean of the faculty at Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., minority and international professors represented 21 percent of its tenured and tenure-track positions. While most institutions focus diversity efforts on hiring black, Latino, and other underrepresented minority faculty members, Skidmore wants also to recruit more Asian-American and international professors “to replicate what’s out there in the world,” says Mr. Breslin.
It’s not just a moral issue, but also one of better preparing students for their lives after they leave college, he says. Skidmore needed a more ethnically and racially diverse faculty to remain relevant.
“We were becoming dinosaurs,” he says.
THE APPROACH
A better-informed search process
The key to making Skidmore more diverse, Mr. Breslin says, was changing how the college searched for and vetted faculty hires.
In 2012 Skidmore started offering workshops to two members of every search committee — the chair and a designated “diversity advocate.” The consultants teaching the classes covered such topics as how to craft a job ad that emphasizes diversity, how to recognize implicit bias, and how to make candidates feel welcome during the campus interview.
Delivering the information in four segments, as opposed to delivering it all at once, increases the likelihood that professors will remember it, administrators say, and shows that diversity is an institutional priority.
“Lots of schools will do the one-and-done approach to training the faculty to search,” Mr. Breslin says. “It simply doesn’t give faculty the impression that you care about the importance of diversity and inclusion.”
In addition to the educational interventions, administrators themselves step in near the end of the process to evaluate whether diversity has been properly weighed.
Once a committee begins winnowing applicants, Mr. Breslin and the associate dean meet with the chair and the diversity advocate and ask them to justify their short lists.
“If they come to me with 10 names, and nine of them are white men, and that’s not what’s represented in the applicant pool,” Mr. Breslin says, “then we tell them to go back to the drawing board.”
THE CHALLENGES
Faculty skepticism
Some faculty members were skeptical of any involvement by central administrators or consultants in searches. Others, like John Brueggemann, chair of the sociology department, worry that the focus on race could have led the college to ignore other important types of diversity, including class, sexual orientation, and academic concerns.
“Sometimes you can end up thinking about the color of a candidate, and you may lose track of other things that have been important in the past, like teaching experience or making sure we have certain core topics covered in our curriculum,” Mr. Brueggemann says.
Mr. Breslin also hears professors say they want to hire the most qualified candidate, not the diversity candidate. That, he says, allows for a teachable moment.
Mr. Breslin, who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, acknowledges his own privilege, saying he’s a “white, male, heterosexual, upper-middle-class, Ivy League guy.”
Historically, he often explains to faculty members, applicants like him have been the main conception of a great faculty candidate — the person who went to an elite college and was able to amass an excellent publication history and teaching record, often partly because of the financial resources that allowed him to do so.
“That is one demonstration of significant chops when it comes to teaching our students,” Mr. Breslin says. “But it’s only one perspective of what makes for excellence. If we’re in the business of having a faculty that really does mirror the community, we have to have many perspectives of what constitutes excellence.”
THE RESULTS
Increases in minority and international faculty members
In the three years since the administration took a more active role in faculty searches, 22 of the 45 tenure-line searches have resulted in the hiring of a minority or international faculty member. Moreover, in 2011, such faculty members represented 21 percent of 183 tenured or tenure-track positions. They now are 33 percent of 190 such positions.
The less-tangible results, Mr. Breslin says, are the shifts in institutional culture. He would frequently tell committees to overhaul their searches, but the need to do that has dropped in the last year. “A commitment to having a diverse faculty is the new normal,” he says.
Mason Stokes, an associate professor in the English department who has chaired four searches since the workshops began, says he has noticed a gradual change in the college’s environment around inclusive hiring.
“With each new search,” he wrote in an email, “more of my colleagues have gone through the workshops, and this productively decentralizes responsibility for hiring.
“In other words, it was no longer just me, as chair, who had to ‘police’ the process, or even the designated ‘diversity advocate.’ I began to see a critical mass of folks invested in getting this right.”
Even Mr. Brueggemann, the sociology chair, who has voiced some concerns, says he’s pleased with the results so far. But he cautions that not all institutions will experience Skidmore’s success.
“There are people in the conversation who think diversity at all costs, at the expense of any other ideals,” Mr. Brueggemann says. “There are other people who are suspicious of any diversity effort. Dean Breslin is trying to thread the needle, and I think he’s mostly got it right so far.”
Vimal Patel covers graduate education. Follow him on Twitter @vimalpatel232, or write to him at vimal.patel@chronicle.com.
