Creativity, flexibility key in faculty searches

Goals for diverse faculty fulfilled with hard work

At any college faculty meeting at least one fact is striking. Most of Oberlin's faculty are white men. About 60 percent in fact.

With this fact in mind, along with the upcoming exodus of up to a third of college faculty in the next ten years due to retirements, many faculty and administrators see an opportunity to make the goal of gender and racial diversity of the faculty a reality.

But having a diverse faculty is not as simple as naming it as a goal for the institution. Departments face challenges in defining the reasons for diversifying as well as coming up with effective tools to attract diverse applicant pools and final candidates.

This year's tenure track searches, which have so far turned up seven women and two people of color, are examples of how a goal like diversity translates into policy and procedure evolution in the hiring process.

Faculty have a general consensus about the importance of hiring a diverse faculty. Faculty's relationship with students and the connection between faculty and curricular diversity were the two main reasons cited for stressing diversity.

Dean of the college of Arts and Science Clayton Koppes said he sees several key reasons diversity is important. He said minority and female faculty come to Oberlin with backgrounds that sensitize them to difference, making them able to relate to a diverse student body.

He also said faculty who are paying attention to issues of diversity and difference are on the forefront of academic thought. "In humanities and social science many of the most significant intellectual questions today deal with questions of difference," he said. "Engaged intellectuals have to be engaged with these issues."

The bottom line of Koppes' ideas is that diversity and excellence in a faculty go hand in hand.

Professor of Biology Yolanda Cruz disagrees that this is necessarily true. "I think it is an unfortunate simplification," she said. "It is a naive view." Cruz said assuming diversity necessarily coincides with excellence is over-optimistic. "An excellent faculty will sometimes become diverse," she said.

Several faculty who prioritize diversity see the ability of professors to relate to students as a main reason. Professor of Politics Sonia Kruks said when she came to Oberlin as a political scientist specializing in issues of women and feminism many women approached her excited to have her at Oberlin.

Associate Professor of Biology Robin Triechel said minority and female faculty can act as role models for students thinking about entering teaching. She said she hopes a diverse faculty excited about their work would help bring an even more diverse faculty to colleges like Oberlin in the future. "But at some generation you have to have pioneers," she said.

Cruz disagrees that diversity is necessarily correlated with more understanding between students and faculty. "I like to think that I am a role model for anyone in Biology," she said.

Cruz said she thinks faculty searches should seek only the most excellent faculty, and not cite racial or gender diversity as a specific priority.

Faculty in some departments, especially humanities and social sciences, also see diversity as a way to stay on the forefront of academic inquiry. Steven Volk, chair of the History Department, said, "There is a growing recognition that the US. narrative had been too narrowly defined." He said that expanding that narrative is one of the important areas of historical analysis today.

Volk said there is a real connection between that type of curricular development and faculty diversity. "The point of fact is that more Latinos will study Latin American history and more African Americans will study African American history," he said. "Diversifying the faculty is diversifying the curriculum."

Cruz disagrees with this idea as a necessary fact. "It is not true that the best historian of the Philippines is a Filipino," she said.

President Nancy Dye described the challenge of attracting a diverse candidate pool: "One little ad in one professional journal may not be enough," she said. "It is not an easy job; you really have to work."

Ruth Spencer, director of human resources, thinks the job is hard, but doable. "We believe that if we go the extra mile we can get minority candidates," she said.

Getting applicants in one of the first steps of any search, and many departments are learning how to fine-tune this process in ways that encourage a diverse pool.

Triechel described some of the techniques the Biology department used to bring in a broad applicant pool in their search last year.

Triechel said the department wrote personal letters to contacts, asking for recommendations of potential candidates, particularly minorities. She said they also used guidance provided by the Department of Human Resources about professional journals to advertise in that might have more diverse readerships.

Triechel said the department really "went out and beat the bushes for candidates. If they were out there then they certainly were aware the job was there," she said.

Writing the actual job description is another place when departments can think about diversity according to Dye. She said advertising for a job that appeals to minorities and women is one way to ensure a diverse pool.

Other departments used other flexible approaches to attract applicant pools as well. David Walker, professor and chair of English, said they accepted applications from candidates who had not yet finished their dissertation, thus widening the pool.

This flexibly brought one of three new faculty members the department hired this year. Gillian John, who is currently working on her dissertation at Temple University, will join the faculty in the 1998-9 school year after finishing her Ph.D.. John will teach African-American literature.

John has been hired along with nine other new faculty, for tenure-track positions this year. Koppes is very pleased with the efforts put into these searches and the results of them. With two positions still not final in Economics and Women's Studies, seven women have been hired and two people of color.

Other tenure track hires in the English department include Wendy Motooka who is currently an assistant professor of English at Harvard University, and Jeffrey Pence who received his Ph.D. from Temple University and has worked as a teaching assistant there.

Other senior hires in the college include Pamela Alexander, poet-in-residence at MIT and Martha Collins, director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts, who are splitting one tenure track position in Creative Writing.

The Women's Studies Program searched for two tenure track positions this year, one of which is not finalized. Oberlin's Assistant Professor of History Wendy Kozol was hired for the second tenure track position.

The Department of Classics hired Jennifer Lynn, who has been a graduate assistant at Columbia University, for its tenure track position.

Leigh Gibbon, a graduate assistant at Princeton, was hired in Religion, and the Department of Chemistry hired Manish Arun Mehta, currently a post-doctorate fellow at the University of Washington, for its senior position. Mehta taught at Oberlin as a visiting professor in 1993-4.

Koppes is delighted by the results of the searches. "I think there has been exceptional hiring this year," he said.

In addition to developing a diverse candidate pool, Oberlin must sell itself as a place to live and work, so final candidates are excited about coming to Oberlin. Many feel that the town of Oberlin may leave somethings to be desired for candidates.

Volk and Spencer said the College should try to present Oberlin as part of the Cleveland market; they said many of the faculty Oberlin would try to attract in the future will want to be near a major city.

"In most urban centers you are going to find a much more diverse population," Spencer said. Spencer said in an effort to connect Oberlin to its outside community they are giving copies of the student handbook, which includes descriptions of Cleveland and other nearby places, to new faculty and candidates who visit Oberlin.

Another obstacle, particularly to attracting women, is the historically low retention rate of women. Oberlin ranks at the bottom among its peer schools in the retention of women faculty, a fact that many cite as a barrier to bringing women here at all.

Volk said it become an issue of stopping the cycle of women not coming to Oberlin because of that statistic. "How do you cross that first hurdle?" he asked.

Kruks said this retention problem was something of a puzzle to her. "I am puzzled because I do think the school has been quite flexible," she said.

She said the social environment of Oberlin could be a turn-off to some women faculty. The size could offer few options for single women, and also make it difficult for a spouse to find a job - making it a hard place for married couples.

Kruks pointed out though that more isolated schools like Grinnell College in Iowa do better than Oberlin in female retention rates.

Susan Colley, professor and chair of Math, said women on the faculty tend to get overworked a little in terms of committee work.

Despite these drawbacks, Koppes and many faculty are optimistic that Oberlin can attract a diverse faculty in the future. Koppes thinks the hiring done this year is an example of this possibility. "People should realize that Oberlin is a good job. We offer very attractive salaries at the assistant professor level," he said.

Several faculty also named Oberlin students as an important attraction for Oberlin. "I have felt that ever since 1978 when I came here for my interview that Oberlin students are one of the best selling point of Oberlin," Koppes said.

Volk agreed, saying he thinks allowing candidates a lot of contact with students is one of the best approaches to encouraging them to come to Oberlin.

Faculty in the natural sciences sometimes argue that diversifying faculty is more difficult in their disciplines. For example, Colley said there are very few minority math Ph.D.s. "It is a number so small that recruiting is not likely to reveal very many candidates," she said.

Spencer also talked about this obstacle, saying there is a shrinking pool of minority Ph.D.'s.

Koppes recognizes that having a diverse faculty could be easier in some discipline than others. But he does not see that as a reason to lower the college's expectations. "Across the college as a whole there is every reason to expect good representation of minorities and women," he said.