Strategy: Recruit, Develop and Retain a Distinguished and Diverse faculty
Point People: Barbara Horwitz
Narrative Summary of Third Year Implementation Efforts:
As described below, we have continued to build on the efforts of existing faculty, chairs, deans and other administrators to facilitate the recruitment, development, and retention of a distinguished and diverse faculty. During the past year, the campus hired ~ 90 new ladder faculty of which ~40% were women and ~26% were faculty of color (http://academicpersonnel.ucdavis.edu/statistics/SummaryFacultyhires.htm). Approximately 70% of the new ladder faculty were hired at the Assistant rank, ~15% at the Associate rank, and ~15% at the Professor rank.
Advances and Ongoing Programs Consistent with the Strategy:
- Continued meetings with the chairs of recruitment committees to discuss best practices for faculty recruitment, to provide and explain the use of hiring goals and utilization data/availability pools for women and underrepresented minorities, and to answer specific questions about their recruitment.
- Developed web-based data reflecting each department’s faculty profile by gender and ethnicity, recruitment goals, and past five hear hiring history. This information is designed to provide recruitment committee chairs, department chairs, and deans with tools to analyze and enhance their recruitment strategies in order to diversify their applicant pools.
- Developed a new Recruitment web page with links to numerous websites/documents that include information about the campus, surrounding areas, and programs and opportunities that support UC Davis faculty (http://facultyrecruitment.ucdavis.edu/). This page is intended to provide “one stop shopping” for prospective as well as hired faculty.
- Developed a Faculty Diversity web page with links to UC Davis policies, programs, resources, research findings, reports, and data related to diversity issues (http://academicpersonnel.ucdavis.edu/facdiv/index.htm).
- Continued emphasizing hiring at the junior level (Assistant/Associate ranks) and utilization of the department’s five year hiring history in reviewing their requests to upgrade recruitments from junior to open or to senior searches. Such upgrades were approved only under unusual circumstances.
- Continued to provide guidance to Senate faculty regarding the campus’ policy on parental leaves/modified duties (http://academicpersonnel.ucdavis.edu/worklife.cfm) and on the development of work-life balance provisions for all faculty in the School of Medicine (http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/academicpersonnel/docs/SOM_Medical_Leave_Policy_July_1_2005.pdf).
- Continued utilization of the Partner Opportunities Program (http://popprogram.ucdavis.edu/), the Mortgage Origination Program (http://homeloans.ucdavis.edu/).and off-scales where necessary for competitiveness in hiring and retention.
- Continued to refine/provide the New Faculty Workshop designed to provide information/resources to assist new Senate faculty in building a successful academic career at UC Davis.
- Implemented a two day workshop for new chairs which will that included both policy and best practices for a variety of issues, including the role of chairs in faculty advancement/faculty success, faculty searches, managing department resources, compliance with financial management standards/responsibilities, fostering a positive and productive work environment.
- Expanded the monthly brown bag lunches with new and continuing department chairs to continue to discuss the academic leadership of departments and programs as well as strategies for dealing with difficult department issues.
- Continued to refine the web-based Handbook for Department/Program Chairs that discusses both the “nuts and bolts” of being a chair and provides a core of information on best practices and web resources to assist chairs in effectively managing a department (http://academicpersonnel.ucdavis.edu/chairs_handbook.cfm).
- Continued the monthly brown bag lunches with new faculty to include a variety of topics related to academic success and issues that they wished to discuss (e.g., the development of effective teaching, managing labs and mentoring graduate students, grantsmanship, work/life balance policies, and personnel policies/preparing dossiers) and provide resources to individual faculty.
- Continued to streamline the reviewing of personnel actions by reducing the use of ad hoc committees for personnel actions that the Academic Senate Committee on Academic Personnel (CAP) and the Academic Federation Personnel Committees felt that they had the expertise to evaluate.
- Implemented the next steps in refining the functional aspects of a campus wide process for generating and reviewing personnel actions; continued to train staff in this process, and prepared for broader implementation during the 2006-07 academic year.
- Continued efforts to obtain endowed chairs – current count is ~100.
- Collaborated with UC Berkeley on a proposal to the Sloan Foundation to develop tools to ensure that the campus policy on parental leaves/modified duties is well understood by departments and deans. This proposal was funded and will be implemented during the next academic year.
- Developed guidelines and eligibility criteria for the “Davis Professorial Salary Scale” (DPSS) to deal with market-induced salary compression.
Short Statement Plans for 2006-07
- Continue all efforts described above related to search committees, new faculty, department chairs, and faculty/chair leadership issues.
- Continue development/testing and campus distribution of the in-progress e-dossier program/database for personnel actions.
- Continue work on ways to facilitate departments/programs/deans in nominating faculty for prestigious extramural fellowships, awards, etc.
- Finalize an FAQ for Academic Federation Employees.
- Implement and refinement of the Davis Professorial Salary Scale adjustments.
- Implement the mentoring program for work-life balance in concert with the Sloan Foundation award.