Intentions in Recruiting Diverse Faculty with Competencies to Contribute to DI&E

Explore current resources and research to understand some issues of intentions in recruiting diverse faculty in STEM.  At Lehigh, many units request statements of  "Contributions to Diversity, Inclusion and Equity" or use other ways in their job ads in order to convey intentionality towards DI&E and identify new colleagues with competencies to contribute to the the D&I&E mission. Explore concerns around uneven implementation and inconsistent expectations with respect to such statements and gaps in intention versus reality. 

To summarize the papers below: 

Gibbs and colleagues (2017) predicted that despite the growth in the pool of underrepresented PhD graduates, the composition of faculty would remain stagnant through the year 2080. Both graduate school and faculty hiring contain systems of gendered and racialized processes.  A qualitative study of data science related faculty job postings revealed that intentionality towards diversity and inclusion varied significantly. Work by Pearson and Cropps and others summarizes some of the faculty recruitment landscape. Some ads had no reference to diversity beyond a required one-sentence equal employment opportunity (EEO) statement, others explicitly addressed inclusion within the announcements, and still others required a standalone diversity statement as part of a complete application. Researchers have found that about 80% of survey respondents who served on search committees "Disagree or Strongly Disagree" that "Diversity statements should not be required for positions where research in a technical field is a primary responsibility for the position."  Nevertheless, there are pros and cons to the implementation of requesting diversity statements. 

Most of the perceived concerns in these peer review journal articles have to do with inconsistencies in shared understanding and purpose of such statements, and the risk that racial and ethnic minorities will still be judged more harshly. Where stand alone statements have been requested, there is a wide variability in implementation across a few dimensions: what the applicant should submit (including what a statement is called and if there is applicant-facing guidance on what it is intended to mean), how applicants approach the statement, and the degree to which the search committees are equipped to evaluate these statements. Applicants, especially applicants of color, may perceive their hireability to be contingent on their performance of “the right type of diversity,” though most still  decided to position themselves in authentic and humanizing ways.  Further, it is important to implement changes to hiring which prevent implementation of stand alone statements  having the negative consequence of making a commodity out of difference and thus maintain the status quo. The scholarship continues to point out that it is not merely enough to ask for stand alone statements, but the purpose of the statement and how it will be considered should be clear to both the applicant and the recruiting department, and hiring committees need guidance on how to evaluate statements. If the goal is to hire individuals who have and will apply principles of DEI in the way they do their work (teaching, advising, mentoring, scholarship, etc.), then that should be turned into criteria for the job requirements. While it may not always be recommended or desirable to have a stand alone statement (given the ecosystem, context of the search), a statement can help an applicant highlight and a search committee evaluate the salient skills, knowledge, plans to be a contributor to diversity, inclusion and equity in the organization and the field.

At Lehigh, the ADVANCE Center helps provide education about implementing the following best practices: 

• recommendations that departments engage in deep conversations about the comprehensive hiring goals and understand and define what diversity, inclusion, and equity mean in their disciplinary context
• crafting job ads at the same time as evaluation criteria
• create position description expectations such that contributions to DI&E are thoughtfully articulated and integrated duties of the position
• design rubrics to attend to all the job requirements with indicators for each criterion and socialize rubrics to help mitigate biases that erroneously uncouple excellence from DI&E or undervalue service.
• provide applicants guidance on what a "Contributions to DI&E" statement means in a Lehigh context.

• equip members of search committees to evaluate a "Contributions to DI&E" statement and indicators of contributions to DI&E without expecting more from scholars of color or white women, or without giving undue advantage to white men

   

Liera, Román and Aireale Rodgers. "“I’m a Needed Commodity in the Academy”: Racial Capitalism and the Positioning of Race as Capital in the Faculty Job Market." The Review of Higher Education, 2024. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/rhe.0.a945290.

Cropps, T., & Pearson,, Y. E., & Wu, J., & Boyle, S. R., & Phillips, C. M. L. (2023, June), Faculty Perceptions of Diversity Statements in STEM Faculty Job Applications Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42270

Pearson, Y. E., & Cropps, T., & Boyle, S. R., & Phillips, C. M. L. (2022, February), Diversity Statements in STEM Faculty Job Applications Paper presented at 2022 CoNECD (Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity) , New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/1-2--39115

Boyle, S. R., & Phillips, C. M. L., & Pearson, Y. E., & DesRoches, R., & Mattingly, S. P., & Nordberg, A., & Li, W. W., & Rifai, H. S. (2020, June), An Exploratory Study of Intentionality Toward Diversity in STEM Faculty Hiring Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--34124

Schmaling, K.B, Trevino, A.Y., Lind, J.R., Blume, A.W., & Baker, D.L. (2015). Diversity statements: How faculty applicants address diversity. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 8(4), 213-224.

University of Iowa. (2021). Diversity info and resources. https://hr.uiowa.edu/development/supervisorstoolbox/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/diversity-info-and-resources

O’Meara, K., Culpepper, D., & Templeton, L.L. (2020). Nudging toward diversity: Applying behavioral design to faculty hiring. Review of Educational Research, 90(3), 311-348. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654320914742

Paul, J.D., & Maranto, R. (2021). Other than merit: The prevalence of diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in university hiring. American Enterprise Institute. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep38705