Dean S Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion (DACDI) Meeting Minutes

Dean’s Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion (DACDI) Meeting Minutes

Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 1:00 – 3:00 PM Building 1, 1110

In attendance: Bridget Conroy, Aisha Dickerson, Anne Lusk, Amie Montemurro, Scott Olesen, Meredith Rosenthal, Deepa Soni, Stephanie Smith-Warner, Chris Suharlim, Tiffany Lemon, Valerie Polletta, Betty Johnson

Welcome & review of norms of participation

"Diversifying Faculty" - Report of Findings & Discussion: Scott Olesen & Aisha Dickerson Summary: In gathering background information, Scott and Aisha pointed out that

1)HSPH has a considerably low representation of underrepresented minorities (URM) holding faculty positions and academic appoinments. This proportion gets lower as faculty status increases from Assistant, to Associate, to Full Professor. Although the proportion of female faculty at HSPH was not particulary low, representation for females in Full Professor positions was approximately 25%.

2) Programs at Univeristies with a more prominent representation of URM (i.e. UAB and UNC) had several common programs proven to be effective including a Diversity Leadership Council consisting of faculty and upper-level administration, required diversity education for search committee members, full-time staff dedicated to year-round targeted identification and hiring of URM postdocs and faculty, and school funds specifically designated for scholarships, fellowships, and start-up funds for URM.

3) Literature has suggested implementation of the following measures to increase diversity: Hiring of departmental specialists for URM recruitment, recruiting for higher-level academic positions (not just entry-level faculty), diversifying each search and tenure committee or having a senior faculty member from a different department serve as a “diversity advocate” when no intradepartmental diversity is present, starting a visiting dissertation scholars-in-residence program, and considering cluster hiring.

Betty Johnson Dean Johnson is working on a strategic plan regarding diversity. She looked at the commonalities of the development of a search as well as how it should be monitored. Before a search is started at The School there is a conversation between the chair of the department and the deans’s office. Dean Johnson suggests that, for the positions to attract diverse candidate, the position description has to be focused on teaching and research needs to enhance the attractiveness of the position to women and minorities. The description of the position should clearly state that diverse candidates are welcome and encouraged apply. In addition, the position should be posted everwhere. The schools that are the most successful are the ones that have very strong outreach at the start of a search to compile as many recommended names as possible.

The Chan School search process is very decentralized. We mostly have open searches but it is possible to do a targeted search for a woman or URM. Going forward the Chairs now have to present any new search request at the Academic Council which is a meeting of all the dean’s and all the chairs at The School.

There are strong mentoring programs at the schools successful in diversifying staff. Dean Johnson is also working on tying in the Yerby Fellowship program with future searches.

The Chan School has introduced implicit bias training to seach committees. A member of ODI attends the first search committee meeting for every search. Every candidate gets rated by every candidate privately before the committee meets so that there isn’t a dominant voice at the table. There is a group at The University is trying blind reviews.

The School has talked about having students and post-docs in the search process by having the candidates give a 30-minutes searching sample. Dean Johnson gave an example of a student group had been trained to review faculty. There is a question about wether or not including this in a search will help with diversity.

Special attention needs to be paid to recruitment and mentoring. We also want the department to be welcoming. Dean Johnson said that her work can benefit from suggestions from DACDI and has asked for recommendations from this group. She has asked us to think in terms of how to help the school be seen as a more welcoming place while raising the levels of work expectation. She is also gathering a compreshensive marketing list for furture searches and asked for suggestions for that list. She hopes to have a pilot plan in place by the end of November.

The search process is highly confidential which makes it difficult to include anyone in the search outside of the committee.

Perhaps there could be school wide norms for highering. The idea to have candidates meet with students and post-docs was proposed. Meredith is willing to be the point person if this wants to be persued with Faculty Affairs.

New DACDI Governance Plan - Review / Clarification / Sign-Up Sheet Committee members were asked to sign up for one of 5 categories to help with the administration of running DACDI: 1. Membership 2. DACDI bylaws 3. Voting & election rules 4. Meeting minutes 5. Website

Minutes Minutes are being published on the web site by Scott. The minutes will be approved at the beginning of each meeting and them published on the web site. Membership Recruitment 16 applications were received but not all open seats will be filled. The question was put to the group: do we relax the requirements to have every segment of the school represented and allow the people who are applying and are passionate about diversity? This will be sent to the committee to vote on via a Qualtrics survey. Do you support adding 4 at-large positions to the DACDI committee to accommodate the fact that not all the positions are filled at any given time?

Deep Soni suggested that DACDI should enforce the absentee rule (i.e. full committee members commit / be required to attend two-thirds or 4/6 of the meeting throughout the academic year) in order to optimize participation, productivity, and person-power on the full committee. . This will be sent to the committee to vote on via a Qualtrics survey. Do you support the absentee rule? “If you cannot attend two thirds (4 of 6) of the yearly meetings, you position opens to open membership”

Student voices as subcommittee has always operated differently from other subcomittees. The membership to the full committee has historically been self selected for the subcommittee or for the full committee. The suggestion is that the full committee member from Student Voices has to apply to the committee to be consistent with the way all other committee members are selected to DACDI.

University Task Force on D&I As we did not have time to get to this item, Meredith will send an email to the group with an update and suggestions.