AAC&U News | March 2003

The Pursuit of Meaningful Diversity at DePaul University

In the democratization of higher education that has occurred since World War II, the student body has become more diverse, but the diversity of the faculty has lagged behind. A little more than 27 percent of undergraduates are from minority populations, but full-time faculty of color number only 14.2 percent.

Public leaders at all kinds of institutions—public, private, two-year, and four year—realize that only a concerted effort will preserve fragile gains in diversifying their faculties. "[I]n addition to the ailing economy, the recent challenges to affirmative action and diversity efforts in higher education may be inspiring more aggressive tactics," reports a recent Los Angeles Times article about the University of California at Los Angeles' public plea trying to keep its four centers of ethnic study alive and increase the diversity in its faculty hiring.

Since research shows that a wider variety of scholarly perspectives and life experiences available among a more diverse faculty is key to increasing the quality of an undergraduate education, many schools have established vehicles to recruit and maintain the diversity of their faculty. But they are struggling to preserve these efforts in a challenging climate.

DePaul University in Chicago provides an exemplary case study of one institution working hard to improve efforts to diversify faculty. At DePaul, a private religious institution with 14,343 undergraduates, the presence of minority students has risen from about 22 percent in the early 90s to nearly 40 percent by the end of the decade. However, the ranks of minority faculty have increased only one percentage point. Fearing this lack would compromise the quality of education at DePaul, the school embarked on a concerted plan to recruit and keep more faculty of color.

"Student diversity has exploded here, and we are doggedly pursuing a diverse faculty," says Charles Strain, associate vice president academic affairs and a professor of religious studies at DePaul. Inclusion has always been part of the school's mission, Strain says, and from its inception, DePaul University has been committed to first-generation college students (45 percent of its full-time freshman students are the first in their families to attend college).

Strain chronicles the efforts DePaul has made to diversify its faculty. In 1997, they established a Diversity Initiative Committee during a presidents' retreat, and they developed diversity initiatives for the university's three strategic goals. The committee was made up of a newly established special assistant to the president on diversity, arts and sciences faculty, the student affairs vice president, a dean in the education department, and a representative from academic affairs. The work of this committee built on and reviewed the work of a multicultural implementation committee established in 1995. They reviewed which recommendations of this previous committee had been accomplished and which efforts had stalled. They prioritized goals that had not yet met, set up "implementation teams" and a timetable through 2006 that lists nearly thirty action items on which they intended to work.

Some of these items include a Statement on Diversity, allocation of special funds to support multicultural curricular initiatives, creation of cultural center, establishment of a multicultural curriculum committee by the faculty council, authorization of hires under exceptional circumstances for highly qualified minority faculty, and the addition of positions in colleges-especially in areas that anticipate little or no minority growth.

Other efforts include raising external funds to establish distinguished professorships for minority and urban issues, creating pre-doctoral and postdoctoral appointments, authorizing senior level positions and taking steps to develop larger candidate pools with candidates from underrepresented groups, creating a part-time faculty vita bank, and integrating diversity and equity issues into management training programs.

Key Strategies

"We have lots of top-down support," says Strain—as evidenced by the ambitious results of the presidents' retreat—"but other initiatives come from places such as student affairs, and then the idea is sold to the administration." This past summer, for example, an ad-hoc group of fourteen faculty, student affairs, and development staff members visited Hispanic-serving and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. This "study tour" included a number of science faculty visiting institutions strong in minority sciences.

They are also setting up a mentoring program for new minority-group hires. This is to help make sure they succeed, for example, with the process of promotion and tenure, and advancing to leadership positions within the university. In addition, they sponsored a workshop on strategies for diversifying the faculty featured in AAC&U's recent publication, Diversifying the Faculty. Michelle Asha Cooper, program associate for AAC&U's Office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives, conducted workshops based on the book. She found institutional commitment in both spirit and policy strong on her campus visit: "It was clear, in the face of budget cuts, that diversity was as still a priority."

Challenges

DePaul has eight Chicago-area campuses that are very different, and nine colleges and schools. Coordination of diversity efforts among the several campuses has been difficult. The challenges to diversifying the faculty are stubborn, but typical: different disciplines have different needs. For example, there are fewer minority PhDs available for hire in the sciences, whereas education has a larger pool of candidates.

In the current climate, the ethics of quotas and other legal issues frequently come up in tense workshop discussions. One campus may need to start recruiting while another campus has a good diversified base and is concentrating on retaining minority faculty and setting up mentoring. "Diversifying the faculty goes in fits and starts-there is some 'institutional entropy' involved; often [departments] don't actively recruit, they do [only] what's required," says Strain.
Ultimately, Strain feels that if they are able to maintain faculty of color, their efforts will snowball: "Faculty of color keep us honest about our commitment to diversity."

For strategies for achieving and maintaining faculty diversity, see Diversifying the Faculty: A Guidebook for Search Committees at www.aacu.org/publications/divfacintro.cfm.

For more information on AAC&U's Office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives, visit www.aacu.org/issues/diversity/.

For the latest innovations, trends, and research on diversity, visit www.diversityweb.org.

Source: Status Report on Minorities in Higher Education. 2001-2002. www.acenet.edu/programs/omhe/status-report/index.cfm.