Building on the work of the Taskforce on Embedding Diversity and Inclusive Excellence, the provost is working with the deans to educate faculty search committees to broaden their pools, to overcome implicit bias and to creatively recruit faculty of color.
In addition, Tulane joined the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, which gives faculty, graduate students and post-docs access to a variety of resources, including a network of diverse scholars who can serve as peers, mentors and coaches. President Fitts has also led two half-day retreats with faculty of color from across the university to listen to their concerns and enlist their help to improve recruitment and retention efforts. In addition, the president has made additional funds available to help recruit diverse faculty. As a result, 48% of all faculty hired in academic year 2019-20 were faculty of color.
Next steps:
We need to take an “all of the above” approach to truly compete: We need to understand the financial challenges when competing with other institutions. We need to develop creative approaches to not only hiring but also to building pipelines of diverse faculty.
To that end, we need to understand what we can do better to ensure we retain faculty of color once they join TU. Anneliese Singh, the associate provost for diversity and faculty development, has been asked to work on improving mentorship to support the promotion and retention of faculty of color, who are often burdened with the extra work they shoulder mentoring students of color and diversifying university committees.