Strategy: Recruit, Develop and Retain a Distinguished and Diverse faculty
Point People: Barbara Horwitz
Narrative Summary of Fourth Year Implementation Efforts:
We have continued to add and refine the activities of the past several years to enhance campus recruitment and retention of a high quality/diverse faculty. As noted below, campus efforts go well beyond the recruitment process as they continue to develop programs designed to facilitate faculty success. During the past year, the campus hired 72 new ladder faculty of which 36% were women and ~18% were faculty of color (http://academicpersonnel.ucdavis.edu/statistics/SummaryFacultyhires.htm). Approximately 71% of the new ladder faculty were hired at the Assistant rank, ~11% at the Associate rank, and ~18% at the Professor rank. The emphasis on hiring primarily junior faculty has increased the diversity of our hires – e.g., over the last 5 years, we have hired 454 ladder faculty of which 38% have been women and 26% have been faculty of color. Itemized below is a summary of activities in pursuit of this strategy.
Advances and Ongoing Efforts/Programs Consistent with the Strategy
- Continued discussions by the Associate Executive Vice Chancellor-Campus Community Relations and the Vice Provost of Academic Personnel with the chairs of recruitment committees regarding best practices for successful faculty recruitments, the importance of diversity, the use of their department’s hiring goals and utilization data/availability pools for women and underrepresented minorities, the use of campus web pages and other information sources that focus on what the campus offers, and other topics raised in the meetings.
- Web access for recruitment committees, department chairs, and deans on their department’s faculty profile by gender and ethnicity, recruitment goals, and past five hear hiring history to recruitment committees. This information was designed to provide tools to analyze and enhance recruitment strategies in order to diversify applicant pools.
- Updated 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 provides “one stop shopping” for prospective as well as hired faculty.
- Updated 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).
- Campus emphasis on hiring at the junior level (Assistant/Associate ranks) and the 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 special circumstances. .
- Updated Partner Opportunities Program guidelines and webpage to provide better clarity, user friendliness, and visual appeal (http://popprogram.ucdavis.edu/).
- Continued utilizing the Partner Opportunities Program, the Mortgage Origination Program (http://homeloans.ucdavis.edu/), and off-scales where necessary for competitiveness in hiring and retention
- Refinement of the New Faculty Workshop designed to provide information/resources to assist new Senate faculty in building a successful academic career at UC Davis.
- Update mandatory two day workshop for new chairs to focus on both policy and best practices for such issues as the role of chairs in faculty searches, faculty advancement, faculty success, managing department resources, compliance with financial management standards/responsibilities, and fostering a positive and productive work environment.
- Monthly brown bag lunches with new and experienced chairs to discuss the academic leadership of departments and programs as well as strategies for dealing with difficult department issues.
- Updated 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).
- 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 trend 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.
- Development of a FAQ on the personnel process/expectations for each of the various Academic Federation titles not included in a bargaining unit (http://academicpersonnel.ucdavis.edu/AF%20FAQs/AF%20FAQs%20MAIN.htm).
- Continued efforts to obtain endowed chairs – current count is ~120.
- Redesigned Work-Life web page to clarify the differences between UC systemwide and UC Davis “family-friendly” (work-life) policies (http://academicpersonnel.ucdavis.edu/worklife.cfm).
- Guidance to Senate faculty regarding the campus’ policy on parental leaves/modified duties (http://academicpersonnel.ucdavis.edu/worklife.cfm) and on work-life balance provisions for all faculty in the School of Medicine (http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/academicpersonnel/review.html).
- A new Faculty Advisor Program for Work Life with volunteer faculty who will serve as contacts to campus faculty wishing to speak to other faculty about the program. The Advisors have been provided with training on campus work-life policies and practices and on mentoring. This program has been designed to amplify administrative efforts to provide accurate information about the program to faculty.
- Expansion of a Leadership Program for new chairs and faculty
- Implementation of the “Davis Professorial Salary Scale” (DPSS) to begin to address market-induced salary compression.
- Additional financial support to the Academic Senate for faculty travel to professional meetings.
Plans for 2007-08
- 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.
- Expand the Faculty Advisor Program for Work Life Faculty to include more faculty across the campus.
- Expand leadership training to additional faculty.