Despite decades of centrally led and externally funded initiatives designed to increase racial, ethnic, and gender diversity among college and university faculty members, most campuses have made little to no progress.
As the chart below demonstrates, although the share of Asian American full-time faculty has increased markedly over the last 20 years, the share of African American, Hispanic, and Native American full-time faculty has remained relatively stagnant.
Often, departmental leaders have a limited sense of the specific challenges they face and think that individual departments cannot do anything independently to increase diversity.
This resource is part of the Increase Faculty Diversity and Inclusivity on Campus Roadmap. Access the Roadmap for stepwise guidance with additional tools and research.
Having data on hand allows faculty to evaluate the success of existing practice and customize efforts to increase diversity and inclusion according to the specific needs of their discipline. Because the challenges associated with increasing faculty representation will be significantly different between disciplines, it is vital that departments have a say over any action plan and have data from their own unit.
Explore the checklists that are important to creating accountability for deans, chairs, and faculty members.
Create accountability and tracking success
Qualitative Feedback on Campus Climate
Conduct surveys at set intervals, every 3–5 years, and track results by rank, tenure status, discipline, gender, and race/ethnicity.
Trends in Faculty Hiring and Advancement
Identify groups that may be taking longer to receive tenure or be promoted to full professor.
Unit Practices and Benchmarking
Analyze departmental data on faculty hires, applicant pools, and faculty composition for the past 5–10 years.
Related resources
9 Strategies to Engage Academic Leaders with APS Data
The Engaging Academic Leaders Toolkit includes eight strategies accompanied by corresponding tools to support your institution in building a data-informed culture that successfully engages leaders.