Better align your institution’s underrepresented faculty recruitment and onboarding processes with present-day realities.
Overview
Even though national student demographics have dramatically changed over the past 20+ years, faculty demographics do not reflect these changes. We know that in order to achieve academic and inclusive excellence, institutions must commit to hiring and retaining faculty members from underrepresented groups. Our present-day realities, such as the lingering impact of the pandemic, anti-DEI legislation, aspirations for the faculty body to mirror the diversity of the student body, and the enrollment cliff, necessitate that hiring managers and academic leaders seek forward-thinking solutions for hiring and recruiting underrepresented faculty.
Join us for this highly interactive in-person conference to gain the tools and strategies you need to recruit and onboard faculty members from underrepresented demographics. With the help of our expert speaker panel, you will have the time, space, and support to:
- Examine your institution’s current recruitment practices and identify gaps in your existing process.
- Develop strategies to build a more inclusive recruitment process for your institution.
- Train and educate campus leaders, faculty, and members of search and hiring committees.
- Establish benchmarks to ensure the success of your inclusive recruitment initiative.
- Plan meaningful onboarding processes to help underrepresented faculty transition to your campus.
Who Should Attend
This conference will benefit faculty, faculty hiring managers or department chairs, academic and faculty affairs leaders, diversity leaders, and human resources managers who provide direct oversight of the faculty recruitment process. Individuals who have indirect involvement with hiring underrepresented faculty, such as chairs or members of the faculty senate, will also benefit from the content of this training.
Agenda
Day 1
Group Discussion: Identifying Barriers to Effective Underrepresented Faculty Recruitment
Comparing and contrasting your own institution’s barriers with what other institutions are facing to effectively recruit underrepresented faculty helps us to collectively identify common challenges and trends so that we can problem-solve together. This opening session will give you the opportunity to share and discuss these perceived or actual barriers with the guidance of our experts. We will also address the present-day realities that have made recruiting underrepresented faculty even more difficult. You will also have the opportunity to hear how our experts have begun to mitigate some of these barriers on their own campuses—as well as the areas they are still trying to improve.
Strategic Planning: Forming a Cohesive Effort
Whether or not recruiting underrepresented faculty is a part of your university’s strategic plan, there may be times when your institution loses sight of agreed-upon goals and priorities. We will highlight strategies to keep your campus committed to its institutional goals—such as leading critical campus conversations around issues of social justice and analyzing campus data related to faculty turnover and retention rates, as well as climate survey data. You will have the opportunity to review your current institutional goals to determine where there are opportunities for further education, dialogue, or data sharing.
Considerations for Academic Units
As an academic leader providing strategic direction to your department’s recruitment and onboarding efforts, it is critical to facilitate conversations that highlight your department needs, both currently and in the future.
This session will cover the following considerations when engaging with your academic units:
How to write engaging and realistic job descriptions based on a variety of faculty roles
How to incorporate current and future student success initiatives into faculty qualifications
Evaluation of where job vacancies are posted and how to expand outreach
Mitigating evaluator bias when reviewing application materials, including diversity statements and letters of recommendation
Communicating expectations to deans and department chairs, and when to involve the provost
Small-Group Discussion: Meaning Making
After discussing common recruitment challenges, how to inspire a cohesive effort on your campus, and best practices specifically for academic units, you will have the opportunity to speak with colleagues at similar institution types, share new learns, and ask questions that you may have for each other in order to encourage “meaning making” of the content that was shared by our experts.
Addressing Your Culture Around Recruitment Practices
Changing attitudes and antiquated procedures, implementing new policies, and mandating training can create feelings of resentment or resistance—particularly when change is slow, and the efforts are not yielding any positive results in recruiting underrepresented faculty.
This session will cover such ideas as:
Aligning practices and procedures with new recruitment policies
Educational workshops for existing academic leaders and faculty
Understanding inclusive hiring practices
Tips for hiring committees to use throughout the hiring process
Ideas for formalizing the roles of diversity recruitment leaders and advocates
Utilizing appropriate advertising channels
Leveling the playing field for underrepresented faculty candidates
Q&A, Day One Wrap-up, & Networking Reception
This informal reception hosted by HireEd Careers, Academic Impressions’ diversity-focused job board, is your chance to decompress, have some refreshments on us, and expand your network of connections. Our programs are intentionally designed for smaller groups, so this is a great time to catch up with attendees and speakers with whom you may not have connected yet.
Day 2
Group Share-Out: What Is One New Learn from Yesterday?
As we kick off day two of this conference, we will reflect on the learning and ideas from the previous day and how you can apply them to your current recruitment processes.
Training Faculty Search Committees
One of the most critical tools in helping to build awareness around behaviors or attitudes that influence hiring practices is training. We will showcase effective training practices used for faculty search committees, as well as how to ensure that conversations with and around an underrepresented faculty candidate can be more inclusive. Our speakers will walk you through sample activities and provide a sample training agenda that you can use for your own faculty search or hiring committees. You will also learn how to identify the appropriate campus facilitator, when the training should take place, which topics would be most useful to discuss, and the pros and cons of making the training mandatory.
Effective Strategies for Partnering with Human Resources
The Human Resources (HR) office is one of the most critical offices to partner with to effectively recruit and onboard underrepresented faculty. Knowing your campus’s faculty demographics, including whether or not faculty are unionized, impacts how you will need to approach your recruitment efforts. A coordinated effort with Human Resources not only yields more efficient processes in your search process, but it also enables consistent and reliable messaging with prospective and newly hired underrepresented faculty. In this session, you will learn how to meaningfully collaborate with your Human Resources colleagues to yield the best outcomes for your search process.
Onboarding Underrepresented Faculty
Now that your institution has successfully recruited underrepresented faculty, what are some meaningful initiatives you can implement to ensure that faculty have a smooth transition to your campus? How might you intentionally involve other critical campus partners, including students, to create an authentic experience for your newly hired faculty? Here, we will highlight ways campuses can provide realistic and necessary initiatives to onboard underrepresented faculty. In small groups, you will discuss the limitations or shortfalls in your current onboarding process and identify at least 1-2 new strategies to improve it.
Bringing It All Together: Identifying Short-Term Goals
In this closing session, you will have the opportunity to reflect on the core themes presented at this conference as they relate to your campus. Using the resources, tools, and strategies you have learned at this conference, you will create a list of short-term goals to boost your efforts in recruiting underrepresented faculty at your institution. You may also use this time to share ideas and solicit feedback from your peers, as well as from our expert speaker panel.
Location
Academic Impressions’ Denver-based office
5299 DTC Blvd, Suite 1400
Greenwood Village, CO 80111
