The job ad is an important opportunity to communicate departmental needs, highlight the strengths of the university, and capture the widest possible pool of applicants. However, most limit themselves by listing overly specific disciplinary requirements and relying on a cut-and-paste equal opportunity statement.
In our work studying institutional efforts to improve faculty diversity, we poured over hundreds of faculty job postings to identify where the greatest opportunities to demonstrate a true commitment to faculty diversity and inclusion were. Below are the four key elements we discovered:
This resource is part of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice Initiatives in Higher Education Resource Center.
1. Highlight cross-campus interest in collaboration, community building, and inclusive family policies
A few institutions on the cutting edge are moving beyond boilerplate equal opportunity statements to craft their own tailored declaration of how and why they are committed to a culturally and intellectually diverse academic community. For example, some institutions have recognized how intellectual and cultural diversity plays a role in their objective to support cross-disciplinary study. In this case, one might highlight specific opportunities for cross-campus collaboration to explain the climate the institution seeks to build, and simultaneously attract more diverse candidates who are often in newer, interdisciplinary fields. The University of California, Los Angeles, for example, included this in an ad for Plant Diversity and Evolution:
“There are many opportunities for collaboration across a broad group of partners on and off campus, including the UC NRS Stunt Ranch Reserve and White Mountains Research Center, the UCLA La Kretz Center for…