FAS Faculty Diversity Toolkit

Table of Contents

Initiating the Search and Defining Diversity and Excellence
Active Recruiting and Broadening The Search Pool
The Interview Process
Additional Resources for the Committee
Creating Community and Mentorship Opportunities for New Faculty
Appendix A: Suggested Organizations for Job Postings

 

Initiating the Search and Defining Diversity and Excellence

The work devoted to the hiring and retention of outstanding scholars with as diverse and inclusive a reach as possible is critical to our success as a great university. This toolkit is designed to help provide resources and guidance to allow you to optimize your discovery and successful recruitment of these scholars. Diversity – in every sense of the word and in every local context – is critical to academic and community excellence, and it should be the goal of every search committee to hire faculty from diverse backgrounds and experiences at every opportunity.

We recognize that the notion of “diversity” is not uniform, but rather will have a different meaning across the many departments and programs of Arts and Science; the same can be said for scholarly excellence. Thus, before you begin the search process, the committee should work with its Chair/Director and its Divisional Dean to identify how a diverse candidate can contribute to your particular academic unit. Departments and search committees are encouraged to work with the FAS Director for Faculty Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Development throughout the search process.

Crafting and Posting the Position Advertisement

As you work to craft the job description, here are some suggestions that will help to achieve the most diverse pool of candidates:

• In consultation with your Divisional Dean, create a job advertisement that defines the position in broad, wide-ranging terms, consistent with the committee’s definitions of diversity and academic excellence. Casting a broad search image will allow you to discover candidates that may not have originally come to the attention of the committee. If the initial posting does not yield a significant number of diverse candidates, reconsider the job advertisement and repost if warranted and approved.
• To maintain continuity across searches in Arts and Science, the committee should include the following language in its search ad:
  • The Faculty of Arts and Science at NYU is at the heart of a leading research university that spans the globe. We seek scholars of the highest caliber, who embody the diversity of the United States as well as the global society in which we live. We strongly encourage applications from women, racial and ethnic minorities, and other individuals who are under-represented in the profession, across color, creed, race, ethnic and national origin, physical ability, gender and sexual identity, or any other legally protected basis. NYU affirms the value of differing perspectives on the world as we strive to build the strongest possible university with the widest reach. Click here to learn more about the FAS commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusion.
• Advertise wisely: Please see Appendix A for suggested places to advertise to audiences from diverse and/or underrepresented backgrounds.

Active Recruiting and Broadening The Search Pool

We acknowledge that finding and recruiting diverse candidates can be challenging, and building a diverse pool of applicants requires conscious engagement at every level. The committee should work to identify other colleges and universities, and other Schools at NYU, that regularly recruit from underrepresented populations – especially women and faculty of color – and learn how they have been successful in this effort. Be open to utilizing these and other “out of the box” strategies in your recruitment.

Before you begin the search, all members of the committee should agree on a set of criteria of excellence by which all candidates are evaluated. When defining selection criteria, consider how each applicant may be able to both intellectually diversify your department or program as well as mentor and work successfully with colleagues and students from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Also, be sure to carefully consider how your local community is equipped to support the applicant and her/his field of study without, however, making assumptions about a diverse candidate’s ability to “feel comfortable” in your department or program (see section on “Creating Community and Mentorship Opportunities for New Faculty”). Finally, the committee may wish to work with several evaluation check-lists comprised of different sets of key criteria, such as scholarly productivity/fundability, teaching record, potential collaborations with other departments or schools, and good university citizenship. The committee should work together to devise a unique recruitment strategy and advertising plans that will yield a diverse pool of candidates.

Some additional suggestions for broadening your search pool: 

• Connect with colleagues at peer institutions to seek out potential candidates;
• Identify and contact professional associations that work specifically to promote faculty from diverse and/or underrepresented backgrounds;
• Mine the rosters of high caliber fellowship programs that specifically support students from diverse populations, and advertise on list-serves maintained specifically for post-doctoral scholars from underrepresented groups (the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty, Arts, Humanities and Diversity at NYU would be a valuable resource in this effort);
• Attend professional and scholarly conferences to make connections with faculty from diverse backgrounds, and encourage them to apply – bring copies of open job ads with you (the Vice Provost’s Office has generously supported such trips, and the FAS Divisional Deans will work with you to identify other possible sources of support);
• Ask faculty, current graduate students, and post-docs in your department or program, and even alumni, to help identify potential candidates -- ensure that underrepresented faculty colleagues are consulted in this process;
• Remember that diverse candidates are often under-placed at their current institution, so do not limit your pool by seeking out only the highest-ranked competitor institutions.

The University of Michigan has put together some excellent resources for active recruiting. The resources can be found here.

Once you have your ad approved, post it in places of high visibility to diverse candidates – see Appendix A for suggestions on where to place ads.

Please keep in mind that all applicants must be evaluated for faculty roles on the basis of their teaching and scholarly record. As such, indicating that underrepresented candidates are being reviewed or valued differently than other candidates (based on the characteristics which make them underrepresented) is not appropriate. The committee should be focused on candidates’ scholarship, their academic experience and qualifications, and how they can contribute to the research and teaching missions of your department or program.

The Interview Process

Note: A Diversity Action Plan should be developed in consultation with your Divisional Dean prior to contacting candidates. There are several excellent tool kits that have been developed by peer institutions around the country. In the pages that follow, we provide helpful suggestions and insights from these sister schools, as well as links to their relevant web pages.

From the University of Michigan’s Faculty Search Toolkit:

When interviewing candidates, the search committee should keep in mind that certain questions are unlawful. Below is a helpful chart of appropriate questions to ask (and those to avoid) during the screening and interview process:

TOPIC	LEGAL QUESTIONS	DISCRIMINATORY QUESTIONS
Family Status	Do you have any responsibilities that conflict with the job attendance or travel requirements? Must be asked of all applicants.	Are you married? What is your spouse’s name? What is your maiden name? Do you have any children? Are you pregnant? What are your childcare arrangements?
Race	None	What is your race?
Religion	None You may inquire about availability for weekend work.	What is your religion? Which church do you attend? What are your religious holidays?
Residence	What is your address?	Do you own or rent your home? Who resides with you?
Sex	None	Are you male or female?
Age	If hired, can you offer proof that you are at least 18 years of age?	How old are you? What is your birthdate?

NB: There are additional legal questions that should not be asked. If you have any doubt about the appropriateness of a question, you should contact the NYU’s Office of Equal Opportunity for guidance.

Below are some helpful interview questions you might consider; these have been adapted from Michigan State University’s Faculty Search Toolkit:

• Candidate’s background:
  • What has been your previous experience in mentoring?
    
• About candidate & college:
  • NYU is committed to building a culturally diverse environment. How would you further this goal?
  • How have multicultural issues influenced and/or been a part of your teaching, research and outreach/service?
    
• Teaching:
  • Describe strategies (that you’ve used or considered) for creating an inclusive learning environment for your students?
  • Provide us with examples of how you managed diversity in your classroom setting?
  • Has diversity played a role in shaping your teaching and advising styles?
    
• Research/Service:
  • As a faculty member, have you done any research in the area of diversity?
  • Describe any experience you’ve had to advance diversity among graduate students.
  • As a higher education professional, have you done any work in the area of diversity in the community
• General:
  • What do you see as the most challenging aspects of an increasingly diverse academic community?
  • Follow-up question: What initiatives have you taken in your previous capacities to meet such challenges?

From UCLA’s Faculty Search Toolkit: (See References from UCLA’s section on bias)

Assumptions and Biases in the Search Process

• Women and minority candidates may be subject to different expectations in areas such as numbers of publications, name recognition, or personal acquaintance with a committee member (Wenneras & Wold, 1997).
  
• Candidates from institutions other than the major research universities that have trained most of our faculty may be under-valued.
  
• The work, ideas, and findings of women or minorities may be undervalued or unfairly attributed to a research director or collaborators despite contrary evidence in publications or letters of reference. (Biases seen in evaluations of written descriptions of job performance, and the attribution of success to luck rather than skill.)
  
• The ability of females or minorities to run a research group, raise funds, and supervise students and staff of different gender or ethnicity may be underestimated. (Social assumptions about leadership abilities.)
  
• Assumptions about possible family responsibilities and their effect on the candidate's career path may negatively influence evaluation of a candidate’s merit, despite evidence of productivity. (Studies of the influence of generalizations on evaluation.)
  
• Negative assumptions about whether female or minority candidates will "fit in" to the existing environment can influence evaluation.

Evaluation Bias

• When rating the quality of verbal skills as indicated by vocabulary definitions, evaluators rated the skills lower if they were told an African American provided the definitions than if they were told that a white person provided them (Biernat et al., 1991).
  
• When asked to assess the contribution of skill and luck to successful performance of a task, evaluators more frequently attributed success to skill for males and to luck for females, even though males and females succeeded equally (Deaux & Emswiller, 1974). 
  
• Evidence shows that perceived incongruities between the female gender role and leadership roles cause two types of disadvantage for women: (1) ideas about the female gender role cause women to be perceived as having less leadership ability than men and consequently diminish women’s rise to leadership positions, and (2) women in leadership positions receive less favorable evaluations because they are perceived to be violating gender norms. These perceived incongruities lead to attitudes that are less positive toward female than male leaders (Eagly & Karau; Ridgeway, 2002).
• Evaluators who were busy, distracted by other tasks, and under time pressure gave women lower ratings than men for the same written evaluation of job performance. Gender bias decreased when they were able to give all their time and attention to their judgments, which rarely occurs in actual work settings. This study indicates that evaluators are more likely to rely upon underlying assumptions and biases when they cannot/do not give sufficient time and attention to their evaluations (Martell, 1991).

Biases in Academic Contexts

• A study of postdoctoral fellowships awarded by the Medical Research Council in Sweden, found that women candidates needed substantially more publications (the equivalent of 3 more papers in Nature or Science, or 20 more papers in specialty journals such as Infection and Immunity or Neuroscience) to achieve the same rating as men, unless they personally knew someone on the panel (Wenneras & Wold, 1997)
• A study of over 300 recommendation letters for medical faculty at a large American medical school in the 1990s found that letters for female applicants differed systematically from those for males. Letters written for women were shorter, provided “minimal assurance” rather than solid recommendation, raised more doubts, and portrayed women as students and teachers while portraying men as researchers and professionals. All letters studied were written for successful candidates only. (Trix & Psenka, 2003)
• In a national study, 238 academic psychologists (118 male, 120 female) evaluated a résumé randomly assigned a male or a female name. Both male and female participants gave the male applicant better evaluations for teaching, research, and service experience and both were more likely to hire the male than the female applicant. (Steinpreis, et al., 1999) Another study showed that the preference for males was greater when women represented a small proportion of the pool of candidates, as is typical in many academic fields (Heilman, 1980).

From Washington University’s Faculty Search Toolkit:

“Early Bird” Bias:

Beware of over-valuing applications that arrive early in the process, or simply giving them more attention. It can be helpful to wait until the priority deadline before reading any applications, and to organize applications by some method other than order of arrival.

“Moving Target” Syndrome:

Beware of changing the requirements for the position as the search proceeds in order to include or exclude particular candidates. The terms of the job ad and the criteria of the assessment rubric should be consistently applied. It may be helpful to designate a point during the process to evaluate the usefulness of the assessment criteria and the consistency of their application. How well are the criteria working?

Implicit Bias:

All of us are affected by unconscious bias, the stereotypes and preconceptions about social groups stored in our brains that can influence our behavior toward members of those groups, both positively and negatively, without our conscious knowledge. One well-­‐ documented example is our tendency to feel more comfortable with those we perceive as “just like us” (so‐called in‐group bias), and numerous studies show that in situations of evaluation members of dominant groups are typically rated more highly than others, even when credentials are identical. This occurs regardless of the evaluator’s background—male or female, majority population or racial minority. It is therefore crucial to consider the potential impact that implicit bias may have on the evaluation process.

In sum, it is important for the search committee to decide:

• At which stage(s) of the assessment process will you apply the assessment rubric?
• How will you ensure that agreed upon criteria are applied consistently for all applicants at all appropriate stages of the assessment process?
• How will you work to minimize the potential impact of implicit bias?

 

Finally, we strongly encourage the search committee to reach out to NYU’s Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) to arrange for a workshop for the search committee. Mary Signor, the Executive Director & Title IX Coordinator for the Office of Equal Opportunity may be reached at mary.signor@nyu.edu. Her office is happy to conduct workshops for any search committee upon request.

Further resources from OEO can be found here

Additional Resources for the Committee

Further Implicit Bias Information

Note: At least one committee member is required to complete a training session on implicit bias and its role in the search process. The Office of Equal Opportunity and the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty, Arts, Humanities, and Diversity can provide such sessions to ensure the best possible outcome for every search process.

Videos:
What is implicit bias? 
More information about this topic.

Reading Materials: The Importance and Process of Building a Diverse Faculty

We have put together a collection of reading materials on this topic that can be accessed here.

The University of Michigan also has a great reading list.

 

Some of the information in this toolkit has been adapted from similar toolkits from other institutions, which may be helpful for the search committees to review:

Effective Pool Development Strategies - Cornell University

UCLA

University of Michigan

University of Washington: 
https://www.engr.washington.edu/lead/PostedMaterials/FacultyRecruitment/2007Faculty_Hiring.pdf
http://www.washington.edu/diversity/faculty-advancement/handbook/

University of Wisconsin – Madison

Creating Community and Mentorship Opportunities for New Faculty

Once a faculty member has joined us in Arts and Science, it is the responsibility of all of us -- administrators, faculty, and staff -- to foster a supportive atmosphere in this person’s new academic home. The search committee should consider what their new colleague needs to thrive and succeed here in Arts and Science and develop a plan with their department or program to promote that success in research, teaching, university service, and work‐life balance. Be sure to connect your new colleague to helpful people in the department and across other units and schools: The Divisional Deans and the Vice Provost for Faculty, Arts, Humanities and Diversity can be a particularly helpful source in this regard.

Finally, make sure that our new colleagues have access to mentoring both formally and informally. If your department does not have a formal mentoring program in place, consider working with the committee to develop such a program. Faculty members – both old and new – consistently express a desire for help and advice with both short‐ and long‐range professional development goals. Additionally, it is important for new faculty to have an outlet for open conversation about work‐life balance. Consider connecting a new faculty member with a team of people – both in the department or program and across the school and University – who might be well-suited to help meet these diverse needs and goals of your new colleague. Find someone who can help her/him both articulate a personal definition of success in the academy and develop a pathway to that success.

A valuable general resource: The University’s Mentoring Program for Underrepresented Faculty is funded and overseen by the Provost’s Office to ensure the success of all faculty at NYU. We encourage all colleagues in the FAS to participate as mentees and mentors in this program. Click here for more information.

Some resources for faculty once they arrive:

Vice Provost for Faculty, Arts, Humanities and Diversity:
http://www.nyu.edu/life/diversity-nyu.html

Center for the Advancement of Teaching

Faculty Resource Network

Faculty of Color Caucus:
If a faculty member is interested in joining the Faculty of Color Caucus, they may sign up here

Office of Faculty Resources

Women’s Faculty Caucus
If a faculty member is interested in joining the Women’s Faculty Caucus, she may contact Prof. Laura Viidebaum at lv40@nyu.edu.

Appendix A: Suggested Organizations for Job Postings

African Americans

The Black Collegian
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU Connect)
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
National Association of Black Journalists
National Urban League

Asian Americans

Asian American Journalists Association
Asian/Pacific Librarians Association (APALA)
Chinese American Librarians Association

Individuals with Disabilities

Ability Jobs and Job Access
DisabledPerson, Inc
Getting Hired
Job Opportunities for Disabled Veterans
USA Jobs for individuals with disabilities
Workforce Recruitment Program

Diversity in the Workplace

MinorityPostdoc.org
National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE)
Workplacediversity.com

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, & Transgender

LGBT Career Link
The National Consortium of Directors of LGBT Resources in Higher Education
National Organization for Women

General Diversity

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education
Diversity: A World of Change
Diversity, Inc.
Diversity Employers Magazine
Diversity Link
Equal Opportunity Publication, Inc.
Imdiversity.com
Insight Into Diversity
The Multicultural Advantage
Academic Diversity Search, Inc.

Hispanic Americans/Latinx

Association of Latino Professionals in Finance & Accounting
Hispanic Association for Colleges & Universities National Headquarters
Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education
Hispanic Theological Initiative
LatPro, Inc - Latinos in Higher Education
Latinos in Higher Ed
National Society of Hispanic MBAs
National Society for Hispanic Professionals
Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science

Native Americans

American Indian Science and Engineering Society
Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science

Veterans

RallyPoint (Registration require to see job postings)
Job Opportunities for Disabled Veterans
Military Hire (Registration require to see job postings)
Careers for Transitioning Military
Military Connection (Registration require to see job postings)
Veteran Employment
USA Jobs for Veterans

Women

American Business Women’s Association
American Physical Society: Committee on Status of Women in Physics
Financial Women’s Association
National Women’s Studies Association
Society of Women Engineers
Women For Hire
Women in Higher Education

References from UCLA's section on bias:

Biernat, M., Manis, M., & Nelson, T., “Stereotypes and standards of judgment,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66(1991): 5-20.

Deaux, K. & Emswiller, T., “Explanations of successful performance on sex-linked tasks: What is skill for the male is luck for the female,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 29(1974): 80-85.

Eagly, A.H.; Karau, S.J., "Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders," Psychological

Review 109, no. 3 (July 2002): 573-597.

Heilman, M. E., “The impact of situational factors on personnel decisions concerning women: varying the sex composition of the applicant pool,” Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 26(1980): 386-395.

Martell, R.F., “Sex bias at work: The effects of attentional and memory demands on performance ratings for men and women,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 21(1991): 1939-60.

Steinpreis, R., Anders, K.A., & Ritzke, D., “The impact of gender on the review of the curricula vitae of job applicants and tenure candidates: A national empirical study,” Sex Roles 41(1999): 509-528.

Trix, F. & Psenka, C., “Exploring the color of glass: Letters of recommendation for female and male medical faculty,” Discourse & Society 14(2003): 191-220.

Wenneras, C. & Wold, A., “Nepotism and sexism in peer-review,” Nature. 387(1997): 341-43.