Report: “Faculty Cluster Hiring for Diversity and Institutional Climate”
Organization: Urban Universities for Health Equity Through Alignment, Leadership, and Transformation of the Health Workforce
Summary: Hiring faculty members in clusters into multiple departments or colleges was originally designed to expand interdisciplinary research. But faculty clusters also have the potential to help diversify a college’s faculty and improve institutional climate. According to the report, the University of Wisconsin at Madison pioneered the practice and has hired nearly 150 faculty members in 48 clusters since 1998. In more recent years, institutions such as North Carolina State University and the University of Illinois at Chicago have followed suit.
The report, which takes stock of cluster-hiring programs at 10 institutions, offers “promising practices” such as:
- Be upfront about diversity goals, and develop evidence-based strategies to achieve them, including providing diversity training to search committees and targeting specific disciplines where, because of their diversity, cluster-hiring would achieve the report’s objectives.
- Get early buy-in from deans and department heads so that new hires will be quickly approved and supported.
- Allow faculty members to weigh in on which research topics or disciplines should be under consideration for the cluster-hiring program.
- Let cluster hires know upfront what’s expected of them and what resources are available to them.
- Communicate cluster hiring’s long-term, universitywide benefits to people across the institution.
- Give cluster hires credit for the work they do in their cluster during the tenure-and-promotion process.
- Provide cluster hires with infrastructure, such as space for them to gather or a dedicated faculty or staff member to coordinate cluster activities.
- Create a plan that will keep a cluster-hiring program from fading away in the wake of a leadership change.
Bottom Line: Cluster hiring can increase interdisciplinary collaboration and, depending on how it’s done, can also improve diversity, campus climate, and faculty success.