Advance Faculty Diversity & Retention
Impact Area: Invest in and provide training for students, staff, and faculty
View the DEI Action Plan for 2020-2021
Advance faculty diversity and retention.
Action Item Details
DU continues to lag in both its recruitment and retention of minoritized faculty. This action item, which will be ongoing throughout the 2020-2021 academic year, will build on current strengths and develop new tools for university leaders to more aggressively diversify and retain our faculty. These opportunities and tools include:
- Continuing to build the university’s critical race and ethnic studies, gender and women studies, and urban studies curriculums with commitments to Indigenous and Black community initiatives by exploring the feasibility of cluster hires in Indigenous and Black studies with specializations in sexuality, urban and/or sustainability studies.
- Developing a target of opportunity hiring initiative to aggressively hire faculty candidates, at any rank and in any discipline, who have an accomplished track record (calibrated to their career stage) of teaching, research, or service activities addressing the needs of African American, Latinx, Native American, and Asian Pacific Islander students or communities.
- Investing substantively in growing on- or off-campus initiatives (such as becoming an institutional member of the National Center for Faculty Development) to provide professional development, training, and formalized mentorship opportunities for minoritized faculty to support their promotion, tenure, and pathways to academic leadership.
Updates
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Hiring policies, proposals, and support for minoritized faculty
Lisa Martinez, assistant provost for DEI research and curricular initiatives, is working with the Provost and her office to develop a Target of Opportunity Hiring Policy for the University, a cluster hiring proposal in Black and Indigenous studies, and for greater support for minoritized faculty to engage more robustly in opportunities provided by the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity.
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University of Denver Joins National Alliance Aimed at Developing a More Inclusive and Diverse STEM Faculty
October 29, 2020
The University of Denver today announced it’s one of 19 universities joining a three-year institutional change effort to develop inclusive faculty recruitment, hiring, and retention practices. The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) co-leads the effort, known as Aspire: The National Alliance for Inclusive & Diverse STEM Faculty. The new cohort joins two earlier cohorts that are currently working together to advance such work, bringing the total number of institutions participating in the institutional change effort to 54. The National Science Foundation funds the effort as part of its INCLUDES initiative.