Doing Service Work on Purpose as a Full Professor

Everyone says that when you are promoted to Full Professor, the service burden increases dramatically. Having been promoted a few months ago, I can say that my service burden increased dramatically and immediately. This is not surprising give the research that shows that women put in an average of five more hours of service than their male counterparts. I should say, however, that my service burden this year is almost entirely self-inflicted. To put it more politely, I have been proactive with regard to my service responsibilities this academic year.

I have been proactive so that I can do the sort of service work that I find meaningful. For me, that means making the place I work more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. I work at the University of California, Merced. We are relatively unusual for a high-research-activity university in that our student population is very diverse. This year, 76 percent of our incoming class are first generation college students and 55 percent are Chicano/Latino. Our next largest ethnic group is Asians, who constitute 18 percent of our incoming class. Given the demographics of our student body, faculty diversity is a priority for me.

The Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Faculty at UC Merced

Although student body is primarily Latino and Asian, our faculty members are primarily white. Half of all instructional faculty are white; 21 percent are Asian; 14 percent are Latino, 3 percent are black, and 2 percent are Native American. These numbers, notably, include all instructional faculty, many of whom are temporary. The faculty members are less diverse as we move up the prestige ladder. Whereas 44 percent of all instructional faculty are women, only 22 percent of full professors are women. Minorities constitute 43 percent of all tenure-track faculty, yet only 25 percent of full professors. Of 373 teaching faculty, in 2015, there were 4 African-American lecturers, 3 Assistant Professors, and 2 Associate Professors. We still have no African American Full Professors. In 2015, Latinos made up 12 percent of the Assistant Professors, 9 percent of the Associate Professors, and 9 percent of the Full Professors. (Looking at the data more closely, we also see that a large percentage of our Latino faculty were born and raised in South America and Spain.)

In light of the disparities between our student body and our faculty, I decided to serve as the Inaugural Chair of the Diversity and Equity Committee of the Senate last year. Although diversity, equity, and inclusion are all important, we decided to focus most of our energies on faculty diversity for the moment, as our university plans to hire over one hundred faculty members over the next four years, as part of our $1.3 billion expansion. I find all of this very exciting: the opportunity to really build something!

The Diversity and Equity Committee looked into best practices for enhancing the diversity and equity of faculty, and we learned that other University of California campuses have begun using Faculty Equity Advisors. (One of the great things about creating a campus in the UC system as there are many great examples we can draw from so we never have to reinvent the wheel.) We thus spent the year developing a proposal to institute Faculty Equity Advisors on our campus. Our proposal was approved by the Divisional Council of the Faculty Senate, and the Provost agreed to provide the funds and institute the program this Fall. Yep, that’s right, less than a year from idea to implementation – one of the very satisfying things about working on a small and growing campus.

This academic year, I agreed to serve as the Chair of the Diversity and Equity Committee again and also as one of the four campus Faculty Equity Advisors. We will be hiring nearly fifty people this year, with many of those searches happening in cluster hires. We have cluster hires in Sustainability, Inequality, Power and Social Justice, Human Health Sciences, and Adaptive and Functional Matter. These 16 positions are open rank and in almost every discipline, so if you haven't applied: what are you waiting for?

But, I digress. I was telling you about the Faculty Equity Advisor.  As Faculty Equity Advisor, my role is to:

• Meet with Unit Chair or Dean to discuss composition of Search Committee and explain the importance of a diverse Search Committee.
• Meet with Search Committee Chair. Discuss Search Plan, advertisement, and active recruitment strategies. Ask Search Chair to work with Search Committee to develop diversity benchmarks for candidate pool.
• Review and approve Search Plan.
• Meet with Search Committee to discuss implicit bias, the development of evaluation criteria, and how to evaluate the Contribution to Diversity Statement.
• Review applicant pool to ensure applicant pool approximates availability pool in terms of diversity.
• Review and approves finalist list.
• Provide guidance to Search Committee with regard to on-campus candidates. Ensure candidates are connected with any relevant affinity groups on campus.

As you can see from the job description, being a Faculty Equity Advisor requires a lot of meetings. It also requires getting up to speed with the literature on best practices for faculty diversity. Luckily, there are tons of online resources. Even better, they tend to make similar recommendations.

The reports on best practices tend to recommend talking about diversity and implicit bias with Search Committees, doing broad outreach for searches, developing clear evaluation criteria, and having diversity on Search Committees. We have tried to implement these practices and I look forward to letting you know at the end of the year what works and what does not.

I also look forward to reading your feedback on our approach as well as ideas for strategies that have worked (or not) on your campus.

This is the first year of the Faculty Equity Advisor Program, and I am excited to see what the outcomes are with regard to the 50 hires we will complete this year. I will write a post and the end of the year to report on what we have learned with this effort.

And, in case you were wondering, I have still been getting my writing in, as that will always be my priority. With the increased service responsibilities and the concomitant need to be on campus more, I have been waking up at 5am every day, writing for at least one hour, going for a quick run, and then going to campus to take care of business.

How to Write an Effective Diversity Statement for a Faculty Job Application

Faculty job postings are increasingly asking for diversity statements, in addition to research and teaching statements. According to the University of California at San Diego website, “[t]he purpose of the [diversity] statement is to identify candidates who have professional skills, experience, and/or willingness to engage in activities that would enhance campus diversity and equity efforts [emphasis added].” In general, the purpose of a diversity statement is to assess applicants’ commitment to enhancing diversity and equity on a campus. These statements are an opportunity for applicants to explain to a search committee the distinct experiences and commitment they bring to the table.



So, how do you write an effective diversity statement? If you are a job candidate who actually cares about diversity and equity, how do you convey that commitment to a search committee? (Note that if you do not care about diversity and equity and do not want to be in a department that does, don’t waste your time crafting a strong diversity statement -- and you need not read any further in this essay.)

My first piece of advice is: Do not write a “throwaway” diversity statement. Some job applicants think that writing a diversity statement that shows they actually care about diversity and equity may be too political. Thus, they write a blasé statement about, for example, how they encourage students to come to class in pajamas if they feel comfortable. That is not an effective strategy because it does not show a genuine commitment to diversity and equity.

Of course, it is true that many faculty members overtly reject campus efforts to enhance diversity and equity. However, it is also true that search committee members who do not care about diversity do not read diversity statements. Just like search committee members who do not care about teaching gloss over teaching statements, those who do not care about diversity gloss over diversity statements. So, don’t bother writing a statement directed at faculty members who do not care about diversity. Write one for those faculty members who will take the time to read your statement carefully.

I can assure you that many faculty members truly care about diversity and equity and will read your statement closely. I have been in the room when the diversity statement of every single finalist for a job search was scrutinized. The candidates who submitted strong statements wrote about their experiences teaching first-generation college students, their involvement with LGBTQ student groups, their experiences teaching in inner-city high school, and their awareness of how systemic inequalities affect students’ ability to excel. Applicants mentioned their teaching and activism and highlighted their commitment to diversity and equity in higher education.

Here are seven additional suggestions to consider as you write your diversity statement.

1. Tell your story. If you have overcome obstacles to get to where you are, point those out. If, in contrast, you are privileged, then acknowledge that. If you grew up walking uphill to school carrying two 20-pound sacks of rice on your back, by all means, tell that story. If you were raised with a silver spoon in your mouth, acknowledge your privilege. Either way, use your story to explain how you can empathize with students who confront challenges on their way to achieving their educational goals.
2. Focus on commonly-accepted understandings of diversity and equity. Concentrate on issues such as race, gender, social class and sexual orientation. Don’t try to tone down your statement by writing about how it is hard to be a Kansan in Missouri, for example. Instead, write about racial oppression, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or some other commonly-recognized form of oppression.
3. Avoid false parallels. By that I mean, do not equate the exclusion you faced due to being a Kansan in Missouri with the exclusion an African American faces at a primarily white institution. You do not have to be an African American to have insight into the challenges they face, but if you do not have experiential knowledge of racism, then do not claim it. Instead, focus on writing about what you do know about. If you feel comfortable getting personal, you can write about your own experiences of privilege or oppression. But you don’t have to get personal; you can cite statistics or studies to make your points.
4. Write about specific things you have done to help students from underrepresented backgrounds to succeed. If you have never done anything to help anyone, then go out and do something. Sign up to be a tutor at an under-performing school, build a house with Habitat for Humanity, or incorporate anti-racist pedagogy into your teaching. In addition to having a rewarding experience, you can write about it in your diversity statement.
5. Highlight any programs for underrepresented students you’ve participated in. If you have had any involvement with such programs (e.g., McNair Scholars Program), describe that involvement in your statement. This involvement can either be as a former participant or as a mentor or adviser to someone who has participated. These kinds of specific examples show that you understand what effective programs look like and how they work.
6. Write about your commitment to working towards achieving equity and enhancing diversity. Describe specific ways you are willing to contribute. You can mention your willingness to contribute to pre-existing programs on the campus or you can express interest in creating new programs based on models at other campuses.
7. Modify your statement based on where you are sending it. Your statement for a land-grant institution in the rural south should not be the exact same one you send to an elite institution in urban California. Look up the demographics of the institution to which you are applying and mention those demographics in your statement. For example, if the university you are applying for is a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), you should be aware of that. Or, if it has a well-known scholarship program for underrepresented minorities, you should mention that program.

Diversity statements are a relatively new addition to the job application packet. Thus, search committees are still developing assessment tools for such statements, and many campuses lack clear guidelines. Nevertheless, you can use this novelty to your advantage by writing a stellar statement that emphasizes your record of contributions to diversity and equity as well as your commitment to future efforts.

Reposted from Inside Higher Ed