Faculty Search Committee Guidelines & Resources

College Requirements

• Search committee composition will be at the the discretion of the chair/director and may include faculty, students, or staff. Among other factors, department chair/director should consider demographics when assembling a search committee.
• There will be at least one committee member designated to serve as the advocate for diversity in hiring. This advocate works with the committee chair and members to ensure best practices are being followed for an inclusive search process that leads to a diverse applicant pool and short list.
• The dean reserves the right to appoint a dean’s representative to the search committee.
• All search committee members are required to attend training focused on promoting greater diversity in faculty searches and hiring. The Provost’s Office hosts these trainings periodically throughout the year.
• Applicants should be required to include in their letters of interest a statement on their contributions to diversity in climate and programs.
• Search committees are required to have an informed discussion about implicit bias and the criteria that it will use to evaluate applicants, then submit a written report to their chair/director that summarizes their discussion of implicit bias, including materials presented and non-discriminatory evaluation criteria chosen.

Resources

Comprehensive Guides:

• Office of Inclusion and Equity’s Inclusive Search and Recruitment Toolkit
• Leading questions for diversity advocates (147kb pdf)
• LORT equitable and recruitment hiring guide
• Jacobs School of Music diversity plan

Building a diverse pool of applicants:

• Handouts from Faculty Search Committee Workshop  (987kb pdf)
• UT Policy on Hiring Foreign Nationals
• Recruitment sites to consider posting on:
  • https://faculty.harvard.edu/recruitment-diverse-applicants
• A selection of national organizations supporting underrepresented groups in academia:
  • Graduate or Post-doctoral fellow focused:
    • American Indian Graduate Center
    • Asian and Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund (APIASF)
    • Black Doctoral Network (BDN)
    • The PhD Project
    • Minority Postdoc
    • Gates Millennium Scholars
    • Hispanic Scholarship Fund
  • Training focused:
    • Institute on Teaching and Mentoring
    • National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity
  • Faculty recruitment focused:
    • Southern Regional Education Board Doctoral Scholars Program Scholar Directory
    • The National Registry of Diverse and Strategic Faculty
    • The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
    • Higher Education Recruitment Consortium
  • Diversity efforts within broader national organizations:
    • Association of Public Land Grant Institutions
    • Association of American Colleges & Universities

Applicant’s diversity statements:

• UC Berkeley’s guide and rubric for evaluating a candidate’s contributions to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• Tips for assessing diversity statements from the University of Washington.
• Example DEI Statement Rubric for assessing a candidate’s DEI statement

Creating and posting the job:

• Interfolio – Faculty New User Guide (229kb pdf)
• Sample Job Post 1 – Interaction Design (303kb pdf)
• Sample Job Post 2 – Production Design (270kb pdf)
• Sample Job Post 3 – Music Theory (270kb pdf)
• resource on how to write inclusively: www.consciousstyleguide.com

Non-discriminatory evaluation criteria:

• Harvard University’s Project Implicit about implicit bias.
• UCLA’s website on implicit bias.
• Advance Washington University’s materials on Interrupting Bias in the faculty search process.
• UT’s HR guidance on creating and using a Selection Matrix.
• Sample rubrics to use for evaluating applicants from the University of Washington’s online toolkit.
• Article from job recruiting site ere.net providing examples of gendered language. Second article from online magazine FastCompany about successful rewording of job postings to increase the number of female applicants. Third article from muse.com arguing why diversity in hiring is important.
• Video recorded presentation from Director of People Analytics (aka HR) at Google about unconscious gender bias.
• American Theatre article on unconscious bias in theatre. Ford’s Theatre blog post analyzing implicit bias through study of the play Twelve Angry Men.

Committee Conversation on Implicit Bias prior to Reviewing Applications:

• The committee can review the following basic material in advance of a conversation of the the committee about implicit bias. Doing all of these takes about 45 minutes:
  • Ask committe emembers to complete one or more Implicit Association Test (through Project Implicit at Harvard University) (15 min.) link
  • Watch these videos:
    • Get comfortable with being uncomfortable, Luvvie Ajayi Jones, (10:54) youtube link
    • Implicit bias defined, National Education Association (2:44) youtube link
    • Are you biased? I am, Kristen Pressner (8:48) youtube link
  • Read these short popular articles:
    • Orchestra Auditions, Anthony Tommasini, (~1400 words) NY times link
    • Name Discrimination Study, Robin Young and Serena McMahon, (~700 words) wbur.org link 
    • Whitening Resumes, Marcell Schwantes, (~700 words), inc.com link

Interviewing:

• UT’s HR guidance on interviewing.
• Washington University’s Guidelines for Pre-employment Inquiries describes what you should and should not ask an applicant.
• Best Practices for Conducting Online Interviews (224kb pdf)
• Inclusive Interview Etiquette Guidelines from the School of Engineering recommends ways to conduct a positive interview experience for the candidate.
• Drafting a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Statement describes criteria to look for in an acceptable DEI Statement.

 

Page last updated: 11/15/2022