Design policies to retain and support BIPOC faculty

Over the past decade, academic affairs leaders have focused on hiring more BIPOC faculty to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student body. They’ve used best practices like cluster hiring, inclusive job advertisements, and implicit bias training for hiring committees to increase faculty diversity on campus. But even the best hiring plans fail without a plan for retention and engagement. What’s more, a lot of BIPOC faculty are feeling disengaged—nationwide, they’re more likely to face unequal workloads, tenure denials, and a working environment that creates feelings of isolation and burnout.

On most campuses, leaders have tried to create more inclusive climates through education, training, and informal mentorship arrangements. But these approaches leave out the fact that institutional racism and inequity is not just an individual problem, it’s also a structural problem that requires structural solutions. The good news is that your institution probably has the right structures in place: hundreds of campuses recently added a chief diversity officer or created a DEIJ strategic plan, committee, or taskforce to tackle these challenges. Leaders must now leverage those structures and resource investments to create workplaces where BIPOC faculty can thrive.

EAB brought together provosts and chief diversity officers for the event Why BIPOC Faculty Leave Their Jobs – And How to Design Policies That Will Encourage Them to Stay. During the working sessions, leaders discussed promotion, tenure, and workload policies for BIPOC faculty retention and career advancement. Explore the takeaways from the sessions below or jump to the next steps.

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Review the Key Takeaways

Redesign promotion and tenure policy to broaden and clarify expectations

Traditional tenure and promotion policies tend to have unclear requirements and narrow definitions of excellence. These conditions are demoralizing for BIPOC faculty particularly when a significant portion of their workload (e.g., mentoring underrepresented minority students or conference presentations on DEIJ topics) fall outside of those parameters.

Institutional leaders should reward faculty for excellence in DEIJ-related contributions through the tenure and promotion process with clear requirements, broader definitions of success, and alignment with meaningful institutional goals.

Principles of best-practice promotion and tenure policy

• Clarify requirements: e.g., DEIJ-based tenure pathway (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis)
• Broaden definitions of success: e.g., flexible promotion and tenure framework (University of Windsor); DEIJ statement review rubric (University of Oregon)
• Align with institutional goals: e.g., institutional goal-aligned review criteria (Minnesota State University)

Train committee members to champion best-practice policy

Policy alone won’t actualize change within a department, unit, or campus. Training for tenure and promotion committees facilitates the transition from new policy to practice. What’s more, effective training builds on key DEIJ concepts and applies learning to a specific role.

Positive results of adopting Georgia Tech’s ADEPT Training at Montana State

• Longer time reviewing each dossier
• More supportive committee atmosphere
• Less diversity fatigue

Better manage faculty workload to reduce overwork

Too often, BIPOC faculty are only recognized for core research, teaching, and service activities like credit hours taught or undergraduate/graduate advisees. However, invisible labor such as informally mentoring BIPOC students or junior faculty goes unseen and unrecognized. To make the invisible visible, department chairs and BIPOC faculty can establish workload agreements as a tool to capture the full range of work activity.