Searching for Inclusive Excellence January 15, 2015

Diversity and Inclusion Gender Initiatives in STEMM

The Women’s Place

Why Recruit for Diversity?

• Complex problems need many viewpoints to achieve

the best solutions

• More diverse backgrounds and ideas increase the

likelihood of creativity and new solutions

• Increasing diversity gives us access to talent currently

not represented

• A diverse faculty has positive effects on our diverse

student body

Carrell, Page, & West (2009). National Bureau of Academic Research.(14959), 1-42. Hale & Regev (2011). Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper, (2011-19).

Inclusive Excellence

Why Focus Now on the Professoriate of the Future?

• Between 1998 and 2008, student enrollment increased by 32% (from 14.5 to 19.1 million)

• ~33% of these incoming students were from underrepresented racial

and ethnic groups

• In 2009-10, faculty members of color represented 18% of all full-time faculty members in degree-granting institutions

• 2023 - More than half of all U.S. children will be minority.

• 2042 - Minorities will be the new majority.

Snyder & Dillow, 2010Knapp, Kelly-Reid, & Ginder, 2010

Inclusive Excellence

• The US Department of Education reported that in 1981, African Americans who held full-time faculty positions in higher education composed 4.2 percent of the faculty population.

• In 2003, over two decades later, this number slightly increased to 5.6 percent.

• At this rate of improvement, it will take more than 180 years for the black faculty percentage to reach parity with the black percentage for the US population.

-Quoted in “Recruiting the Next Generation of the Professoriate” by Karen Jackson-Weaver, et al. in peerReview, Summer 2010, Vol. 12, No. 3

The 21st Century Professoriate

Inclusive Excellence

• Women students make up 49.5% of students at OSU as of fall 2014. The proportion of female faculty members (tenure track, clinical and regular) is 38% and much lower at the senior ranks (25% for full professors). Women students in the STEMM disciplines have even fewer female role models on the faculty.

• African American women (1.6%), Asian American Women (4.9%), Hispanic women (1.4%) and other women of color (.5%) make up a small fraction of the faculty in 2014 and growth has been minimal over the last 15 years

The 21st Century Professoriate

See the Annual Status Report on Women for 2014-15 and for 2012 at http://womensplace.osu.edu

Excellence Diversity

Excellence DiversityInclusive Excellence

Task for Search Committees

Broaden the Pool of

Candidates

Ensure Equitable

Consideration of all

Candidates

Become aware of un-conscious biases

Overview

Six Steps:

1) Examine our own biases

2) Prime the pump (recruit before you need it)

3) Build an effective search committee

4) Define your search as broadly as possible

5) Thoughtfully evaluate candidates

6) Host an effective visit

Recruiting Diversity

Research shows that we all perceive and treat people differently based on their social groups (race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, etc.).

We are often unconscious of our own attitudes and associations and this may affect searches

We are all subject to unconscious bias.

Valian (1998) Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women. Cambridge: MIT Press, p. 280.

The Unconscious Mind

• When we encounter a new person:

• All of the associative beliefs and stereotypes stored in our brains that connect to his or her gender, age, class and race are automatically and unconsciously triggered.

Unconscious Attitudes

• Are widely culturally shared

• Are applied more under circumstances of:

• Stress; competing tasks• Time pressure• Lack of critical mass• Ambiguity & lack of information

Dovidio & Gaertner (1998). In Eberhardt & Fiske (Eds.), Confronting racism: The problem and the response (pp. 3-32). Newbury Park: Sage. Dovidio & Gaertner (2000). Psychological Science, 11(4), 315-319.Fiske (2002). Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(4), 123-128. Heilman (1980). Organizational Behavior and Human Performance(26), 386-395. Sackett, DuBois, & Noe (1991). J Applied Psychology, 76(2), 263-267. Valian (1998) Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women. Cambridge: MIT Press, p. 280.

Unconscious Attitudes Affect Evaluation and Performance

• Male and female psychology professors hire “Brian” over

“Karen” as an assistant professor (2:1).

• Differences in recommendations for successful medical

school faculty applicants

Letters for women :• Shorter• More references to

personal life• More “doubt

raisers”

Letters for men:• Longer• More references to:•CV •Publications•Patients•Colleagues

Examine Biases

1) Examine Our Own Biases: awareness is an intervention in itself

Harvard University’s Project Implicit and the Implicit Association Test:https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/

Unconscious Attitudes Affect Evaluation of Identical C.V.s

White names yielded as many more callbacks as an additional eight years of experience.

White names yielded as many more callbacks as an additional eight years of experience.

Applicants with African American- sounding names had to send 15 resumes to get a callback, compared to 10 needed by applicants with white-sounding names.

Applicants with African American- sounding names had to send 15 resumes to get a callback, compared to 10 needed by applicants with white-sounding names.

Jamal

Greg

Bertrand & Mullainathan (2004) American Economic Review, 94 (4), 991-1013.

Prime the pump

Before the search and ongoing:

2) Prime the pump:

• Network directly with young scholars

• At conferences, attend the special interest sessions where diverse candidates can be found

• Widen the pool from which you recruit: actively pursue candidates thriving at less well-ranked institutions

Search Committee

3) Build an Effective Search Committee

• Require and reward a high level of commitment.

• Be aware of unconscious bias and the challenges of evaluation

• Include people openly committed to diversity and excellence.

• Invite faculty from other departments to increase committee diversity.

Search Committee

3) Build an Effective Search Committee (continued)

• Appoint a diversity advocate.

Search Committee

3) Build an Effective Search Committee (continued)

Committee members must acknowledge that unconscious bias is always present.

Broadly Defined Search

4) Define your search as broadly as possible

• The broader the job ad, the larger the pool

• Emphasize interdisciplinarity and opportunities to work on broad issues

• Describe the specialties you want in terms that will appeal to a broad audience.

4) Define your search as broadly as possible (continued)

• Search for venues to broaden your marketing to women and other under-represented groups including newsletters, specialty groups, websites

• Use proactive language in the job description

5) Thoughtfully Evaluate Candidates:

• Explicitly discuss the criteria that define “excellence” in advance. Do not accept “we’ll know it when we see it” definitions.

• Discuss essential job qualifications. Be sure they are explicit and agreed upon. Develop a consistent screening tool.

Candidate Evaluation Tool

5) Thoughtfully Evaluate Candidates (continued):

http://www.umich.edu/%7Eadvproj/CandidateEvaluationTool.doc

Host an Effective Visit

6) Host an Effective Visit

• Provide information well ahead of the visit regarding schedule, expectations, audience.

• Ask the candidate whom s/he would like to meet.

• Treat all candidates well and the same way.

• Try to interview more than one female/minority candidate because of critical mass effects.

6) Host an Effective Visit (continued)

• Treat all applicants as valuable scholars and educators, not representatives of a class.

• Show equal interest in all candidates.

• Show OSU/unit commitment to diversity; make sure all candidates meet with diverse people.

6) Host an Effective Visit (continued)

• Identify a host that can set the tone for the visit and provide a good introduction at the seminar.

• Consider the Q&A culture in your department.

• Consider cues in the environment.

6) Host an Effective Visit (continued)

• Create a packet for all candidates with information on the following:

• Dual career support • Family friendly policies• Faculty rules on tenure clock extension • Local communities

• Provide the same information to all candidates.

What Can We Do?

Stick with Job-Relevant Factors

• Only evaluate relevant qualifications

• Do not seek or discuss information about dual career or family status

• Consider the unintended consequences of personal questions. If these questions arise: • Answer the question• Do not ask further probing questions• Set up resources outside of the search committee

in advance and direct candidate there

What Can We Do?

Possible Innovations: Criteria Review Rather than Global Review and Team of Rivals

• Discuss all candidates on one criterion at a time

• Search committee divides in half. Half takes “pro” position on candidate; half takes opposing position. Discuss, switch sides & repeat.

Recruiting the Selected Candidate

• After a candidate is selected, aggressive recruiting begins.

• Negotiation process should convey that the goal in deciding the offer terms is to create conditions for success.

• Build a culture of search excellence.

Additional Resources

• Portions of today’s presentation are from University of Michigan’s STRIDE program (scroll down to faculty recruitment resources):http://sitemaker.umich.edu/advance/stride_committee

Additional Resources:• University of Wisconsin-Madison, WISELI: http://

wiseli.engr.wisc.edu/hiring.php#resources

• University of Rhode Island, ADVANCE: http://www.uri.edu/advance/recruitment.html

Additional resources are available on the Discovery Themes website http://u.osu.edu/discoverythemeshires/

These include links to the Presidential search’s packet describing the central Ohio community, links to the IAT, links to OSU HR videos on implicit bias, links to the STRIDE website and presentation. We recommend that you review these resources and discuss how you will use them with your search committee.