Excellence in Faculty Hiring

Recruiting excellent faculty is the ultimate goal of any department. Achieving excellence in faculty recruiting requires careful attention to the entire faculty recruitment process. Recruiting diverse faculty is a multi-step process where evaluation plays a major role. We assume that all candidates will be impartially evaluated on their abilities and potential. However, evaluation processes often underestimate the qualifications of historically underrepresented groups in higher education. By providing opportunities for search committee skill-building, faculty will be better equipped to identify subtle biases and engage their colleagues on assumptions of competence and fit.

The process of hiring candidates must change if we want outcomes that reproduce something other than the status quo. As Richard Tapia has noted, the hiring process is one of the most traditional, conservative processes in academia today. The “Interrupting Bias in the Faculty Search Process” film and facilitation guide has the potential to transform the hiring process for a more diverse faculty.

Interested in facilitating a viewing of “Interrupting Bias in the Faculty Search Process”?

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