Use the faculty interview to demonstrate an institutional commitment to diversity

We profiled two advanced institutions who are helping their faculty better answer candidate questions about the campus climate and demonstrate their commitment to inclusivity in the interview process.

Most universities are working hard to reinforce a climate of inclusivity on campus and commitment to diversity, but one area that has been hard to inflect is ensuring increasingly diverse student bodies see themselves represented in the faculty that teach them.

Unfortunately, recruiting and retaining diverse faculty members is easier said than done. Regardless of the central initiatives in place to attract candidates to campus, it is ultimately difficult to convince candidates from underrepresented backgrounds that a university’s dedication to diversity is sincere, especially if there are few underrepresented faculty already on campus.

More on this topic

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.

Prepare faculty to answer candidate questions

The members of the faculty search committee bear the burden of demonstrating the institution’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, but they might not be aware of the wide variety of resources available at the university and in the larger local community. To ensure faculty have up to date information on any resource that might be of interest to candidates, staff in the office of the provost or diversity and inclusion can centrally compile information on resources for new faculty, especially those from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. From their central perspective these staff are likely to locate a greater range of resources often dispersed across a number of offices from the Center for Teaching and Learning to Human Resources, and the Office of Research, among others.

Metropolitan State University of Denver has done exactly…