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August 15, 2000

We are pleased to respond to the Faculty Assembly's May 2000 "Report Card on Racial/Ethnic Diversity". The Faculty Assembly's attention to diversity is a strength for the College and the University. We urge all faculty to read the report, and we urge Faculty Assembly members to bring the concerns raised in the report to their home departments, where they can inform recruitment and retention efforts that promote diversity. The report focuses on representation of US-born minority students, staff, and faculty. This is an important component of the broader story of diversity in the College, which includes cultural diversity and diversity of gender, disability status, and sexual orientation, as well as race and ethnicity. We believe all aspects of diversity have importance for the diversification of our curriculum and of our faculty and staff.

Our College leads the University in diversity efforts in those areas where it has primary responsibility-the recruitment of a diverse faculty and professional staff. We therefore believe the "report card" undervalues the College's contributions. More important, as readers of the report, we found no parameters by which the grades were assigned. We hope that any report card developed in the future will be accompanied by clearly articulated criteria that can serve as standards for progress and can become an object of dialogue, adaptation, and improvement.

We are, however, more than willing to take the report in the spirit in which it is offered-as an encouragement to the College and University to continue making diversity of our faculty, staff, students, and curriculum a high priority. The College is strongly committed to diversifying our faculty and professional staff and to working with those offices that have primary or sole responsibility for recruitment of Merit staff (the University's Office of Human Resources), undergraduate students (the University's Office of Admissions), and graduate students (our departments, in co-operation with the Graduate College) to improve the diversity of our staff and student body.

The College, working with its departments, has primary responsibility for the recruitment of tenure-track faculty. The College has taken the challenge of faculty diversity very seriously for the past 15 years, and has made very real gains. We lead the University in faculty diversity. In the last published data, for 1998-99, we led all CIC Liberal Arts colleges in the proportion of women on the faculty (31% at that time). We have made less substantial progress in increasing the proportion of US-born minorities on our faculty, but we treat every search as an opportunity to do so. Faculty turnover in the College is relatively slow (averaging about 6% per year over the last four years in a tenure-track faculty of about 650 FTE). Nevertheless, since fall 1997 the College has appointed 10 new faculty members from underrepresented US minorities, representing about 7% of all new appointments. In other words, the College has appointed US-born minority faculty at a slightly higher rate than it has appointed new faculty overall.

The record of successful appointments does not represent the effort that the College, DEOs, and departmental search committees devote to recruitment of underrepresented US minorities, since as much effort has been devoted to the 14 offers of appointment that were made but declined by minority candidates in the last four recruitment years as to the 10 offers that were accepted. In total, more than 50 recruitments of US minority candidates were attempted in the past four years. Until there are more US-born minority PhDs, all institutions will have difficulty in attracting and retaining US-born minority faculty members. We are encouraged, however, that analysts foresee the numbers of minority PhDs increasing in the coming decades.

We would also like to point out a problem with the data used in the report. The Office of the Provost and the Office of Affirmative Action are both mandated to use the EEOC's standards for data collection, as are all other federally funded institutions. Because the report uses criteria different from the EEOC's (particularly in making a distinction between US-born and non-US-born minorities), we cannot compare the information in the report with either our own historical data or the data we have or will have on other CIC institutions. The report suggests that its data can serve as a base-line for subsequent efforts. We suggest that only a broader analysis, based on EEOC variables, will provide us with a base-line that will permit cross-institutional analysis as well as historical perspective.

RESPONSE TO RECOMMENDATIONS

Recruitment and Retention

1.1 The report recommends that the College reward departments that successfully recruit and retain minority faculty, staff, and students. In faculty searches, the College believes that a better use of its limited resources is in making the most competitive possible offers, including support aimed at retention, to minority faculty. Recruitment and retention of a diverse faculty and professional staff is a basic expectation in all searches, as the College emphasizes in its letters authorizing new searches and in the annual workshops held for DEOs and directors of search committees. We encourage members of the Faculty Assembly to work within their departments to promote the identification of candidates who will bring additional diversity to the faculty and professional staff. The College does set aside some funds to support the recruitment of underrepresented minorities (defined as Native Americans and U.S.-born Hispanic Americans and African-Americans) for positions as teaching assistants. Once an individual has been successfully recruited, the College authorizes expenditures by the department that may be used for further recruitment in the subsequent year or to support a competitive stipend for the student recruited.

1.2 The report calls for the College to complete its development of baseline data on retention of faculty cohorts recruited for appointment in 1991, 1992, and 1993, who would all be expected to have undergone their promotion and tenure decisions by 1999-2000. Data on reasons why any faculty in these cohorts may have left the University will be fed back into mentoring and retention efforts. We expect to have this data in October.

1.3 The College "make[s] it one of its highest priorities to retain tenured minority faculty as well as increase the numbers of minority tenure-track faculty and ensure that these faculty members receive the support they need in order to get tenure," as the report recommends. The College's support for diversity is enunciated in one of the five goals of its Strategic Plan. The report recommends that the College prepare a plan of action for diversifying its faculty. These plans are generated at the department level and included in the updated hiring plans submitted to the College each spring by departments that request new faculty searches for the subsequent year. Each department faces specific conditions in recruiting within its own subdisciplines that are best addressed by planning at the department level. The report also recommends that a plan of action be developed for retaining minority faculty. The College is committed to supporting all junior faculty as they progress to tenure and promotion. However, offers made to minority faculty under the University's FDOp program have typically included support that recognizes they may need special resources to develop their scholarly record (e.g., travel funding because there are no available mentors on our faculty in an individual's area of expertise). The College continues to believe that arrangements targeted at the specific needs of individuals recruited to our faculty contribute more to faculty retention than a blanket policy or plan.

1.4 The report recommends that the College create a plan of action for hiring a significant number of Merit staff who are members of minorities. Recruitment of Merit staff for the entire University is assigned to the Office of Human Resources. We have forwarded the report to Associate Vice President Robert Foldesi, who directs that Office. We will work with Vice President Foldesi and his staff to investigate what steps can be taken to develop a larger minority candidate pool, and we will suggest that his Office develop a campus-wide report on minority recruitment for Merit staff positions, to determine whether there are units whose recruitment and retention practices can serve as models.

1.5, 1.6 The report recommends that the College conduct exit interviews with faculty and staff who resign and track retention and graduation rates for minority students . We have forwarded the report to the University Registrar, Jerald Dallam, to whom the recommendation concerning retention and graduation rates is properly addressed. The Registrar regularly reports on Persistence and Graduation, and these reports are available on request. The reports are studied by the Provost's Enrollment Management Committee, on which Fred Antczak, the College's Associate Dean for Academic Programs, serves. The University does not require students to inform the institution of their intention to leave, and therefore it has no mechanism by which it can collect data on students' reason for leaving. The University makes it very easy for students to re-enter: they can resume registration after one semester of absence without reapplying. After a longer absence the readmission form does not present the barrier of requiring an explanation for the gap in enrollment.

The Associate Provost for Faculty has been designated by the University to conduct exit interviews for faculty, and Executive Associate Dean Curto also meets with all minority faculty who resign. More important, the Dean and Executive Associate Dean meet multiple times with minority faculty who are considering outside offers and with their DEOs, to discuss what counteroffer might keep these highly valued faculty at the University.

Campus Climate

2.1, 2.2 The College will continue its successful efforts to create a positive campus climate in which individuals feel welcomed and valued and in which productivity is encouraged, and we encourage all faculty to participate in this effort. We also take seriously the report's survey on perceptions of campus climate, although we are also concerned that the report's conclusions are based on responses from only 40% of those surveyed. Because these issues need to be addressed at the University level, Executive Associate Dean Curto has discussed the report with Professor Carolyn Colvin, in-coming president of the University-wide Faculty Senate. Professor Colvin has put the report on the agenda of the Faculty Senate in the fall.

Leadership and Resources

3.1 The report recommends that the College create funding opportunities for diversity efforts and provide additional staff to assist Executive Associate Dean Curto in diversifying the faculty. The College continues to believe that support for competitive offers to intensively recruited individuals is the most effective way of allocating resources in support of increased diversity.

3.2, 3.3 The report recommends that the College create a standing committee on diversity, with budget and staff support, which would issue a yearly Diversity Report Card. The College believes that working with the President's University Committee on Diversity and participating in its initiatives is a more appropriate means of addressing a University-wide concern and a better use of limited resources. The College provides leadership in diversity by leading the University in the recruitment of a diverse faculty and professional staff, by providing a curriculum that reflects cultural diversity, and by working closely with those University offices that have primary responsibility for diversifying our student body and Merit staff.