The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) implemented a Strategic Plan for Faculty Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity (DEI) to hire diverse faculty members, according to a news release from the university's provost.
The plan was implemented on April 14, 2021. It was put in place to meet institutional goals including attracting, recruiting, and employing a diverse faculty; retaining, developing, and promoting a diverse faculty; establishing an equitable and inclusive climate; and supporting innovative and diverse scholarship, teaching, and service.
"Our university has made great strides in its commitment to diversity and inclusion in recent years, but we have much more progress to make," Jay Hartzell, president of UT Austin, said. "Our goal is to create an environment on the Forty Acres where all community members — students, faculty, and staff — are empowered to be true to themselves, to participate fully in our vibrant university, and to thrive as individuals."
The university's first goal of attracting, recruiting, and employing a diverse faculty includes two priorities. The first is to establish and implement procedural norms and policies that represent best practices for hiring faculty members and enhance institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion. Officials at UT Austin plan to strengthen regular faculty hiring processes by increasing the yields of diverse faculty through refining the hiring process. The second priority is to implement centrally-funded, special faculty hiring programs with diversity-related skills as a principal or important criterion.
The second goal of retaining, developing, and promoting a diverse faculty prioritizes establishing mechanisms for assessing contributions to the university community through teaching, service, and research, including a part of the merit and promotion process for tenured, tenure track, and non-tenure track faculty. UT Austin plans to establish formal cross-disciplinary faculty mentoring programs to facilitate the transition from assistant to associate professor and from associate to full professor. Officials at UT Austin believe that going up the academic ladder was historically difficult for underrepresented faculty members.
The third objective of the Strategic Plan for Faculty Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity includes seven priorities that aim to establish an equitable and inclusive climate. These priorities range from conducting annual audits of faculty salaries to identifying salary disparities based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or any other impermissible basis. There will be auditing procedures and criteria of endowments and faculty award recipients to assess their distribution, with a special focus on historically underrepresented groups. There will be auditing of leadership and committee membership and a review of the process for filling tenured and non-tenured positions. A diversity officer position in the dean's office will be created. Officials will design and implement training for faculty members on inclusive student interactions, as well as provide resources for administrators and faculty aimed at creating and sustaining an inclusive culture. Finally, UT Austin plans to increase leadership opportunities for leadership development for underrepresented groups.
The last goal of the strategic plan aims to support innovative and diverse scholarship, teaching, and service. This includes developing and funding a Provost's Early Career Fellows program to support innovative and diverse scholarship, teaching, and service. The next priority to reach this goal is to support the programming and research engaged in by tenured, tenure track, and non-tenure track faculty who have the objective of enhancing campus diversity, equity, and inclusion. Finally, UT aims to develop and support tenured, tenure track, and non-tenure track faculty research and teaching on diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education.
DEI statements are becoming increasingly common for candidates for university faculty positions, according to an American Enterprise Institute opinion article from November 2021. Proponents claim that implementing DEI in the hiring process allows for academic inclusivity. Critics argue that it is a nod to political correctness, however.
Critics argue that universities that require DEI statements from candidates seeking to be hired are more interested in appearing to be inclusive and making sure that candidates are closely aligned with their ideology. Critics point out that certain universities are not allowing meritocracy to guide the hiring of the best faculty to advance academic excellence and the production and dissemination of new knowledge.
Hiring practices that include asking for DEI statements from candidates are rising, the opinion writers claimed. Research on DEI hiring practices revealed that nearly one in five professors are selected based on their alignment with a particular ideology.
While DEI programs are being adopted by universities nationwide, one research paper asked the question, "Do DEI requirements actually achieve their stated aim?" Results from multiple studies from varying organizations indicated that other diversity-related personnel-management approaches have not achieved their stated goals, and some were counterproductive in diversifying leadership and improving intergroup relationships, the American Enterprise Institute opinion article noted.