Senior leaders should determine if their institution has the right resources and stakeholder support for cluster hiring initiatives. Hiring multiple faculty members at once requires greater financial and staffing resources. Senior leaders need to gain support for cluster hires since these require involvement from multiple departments.
Additionally, an institution needs to clearly define topics of multidisciplinary research in order to prioritize them for cluster hiring. We recommend pursuing cluster hiring only after assessing whether it aligns with your institution's goals.
Colleges and universities need to ensure proper funding for the upfront and ongoing costs of cluster hiring initiatives. You may link these initiatives to an institutional strategic plan, embed them in a fundraising campaign, or build a central fund for strategic investment.
Increasing the visibility and legitimacy of cluster hiring to internal as well as external stakeholders can attract philanthropy and garner support. Create a central fund that draws on a variety of sources to cover initial investments in cluster hiring. This prevents over-reliance on a single source and reduces concerns about exclusively drawing resources away from regular departmental hiring.
Communicate the cluster selection criteria and benefits of cluster hiring to prevent skepticism and opposition from stakeholders.
In particular, there are five key points that administrators should repeatedly emphasize in order to minimize faculty concerns:
Disciplinary hires will continue Departments are still involved Selection process utilizes peer review Initiatives are fundamentally faculty-driven Participation is not detrimental to junior faculty
Leaders often struggle with time-consuming cluster searches that require inter-departmental coordination. To execute effective searches for new…