University ranks low in diverse faculty

The university lags behind all but one of its peer institutions in employing minority faculty members, but is near the top of the list in hiring instructors from other countries, according to a survey in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The survey paints a picture of sluggish growth among American professors of color, even though the university has apparently had great success in attracting instructors from overseas. Cordell Black, the associate provost for equity and diversity, said the university has struggled to reflect national demographics even as several of its peer institutions around the country have attracted a diverse faculty.

"It's not a glorious story, we've had a decline in African American faculty over the past few years," said Black, who attributes the decrease to market availability of black professors. "Another factor is that our efforts in some units are not stringent enough to increase the presence of minority faculty. We have too few Latino professors and no American Indian presence to speak of."

The survey, which was published in the Sept. 28 Chronicle and contains data from full-time faculty employed in the fall of 2005, shows that blacks account for about 5 percent of the faculty, Hispanics for about 2 percent of the entire faculty, and American Indians make up less than 1 percent.

Asians make up the largest portion of the university's minority faculty, with about 8 percent.

More than 356 university employees - more than black, Hispanic and American Indian faculty combined - are identified as residents of other countries. The University of Michigan employs more foreign-born faculty, with 414 identifying themselves as non-U.S. residents.

The high number of Asian faculty are frequently drawn to the university through partnerships initiated by university President Dan Mote's office and other segments of the university that promote global consciousness, according to the President's Office website. Black said a majority work as computer science and engineering instructors.

Foreign-born professors frequently come from countries such as China and India, Black said.

Last year the university recruited 99 faculty and about half of those classified their race as something other than white, according to Mote's "State of the Campus" report. More than a third of those recruits were women.

Though the numbers are promising for an institution that values student diversity, the representation of minority faculty has always been a breaking point among proponents of diversity.

Students in the past have admonished the administration to proactively recruit minority professors, according to a 2000 focus group project from the Campus Assessment Working Group.

The report examined the attitudes of university seniors on a wide range of topics including diversity.

"Students of color can feel alienated if all of their professors are of a different cultural background," the report stated. "Students from this study were cognizant of the fact that there is a lack of diverse faculty, staff, and administrators at UM, and perceive this to be another example of the campus not having a genuine commitment to diversity."

Black said these sentiments are indicative of the long road the university has ahead of it to achieving true diversity.

"Some colleges are racially homogeneous and there are too many departments that remain without any faculty diversity," Black said.

He added that "new energy" is being devoted to facilitate the recruitment and promotion of underrepresented faculty, as well as addressing the problems inherent in diversity hiring.

"Many have bought into the myth that if you change the composition of faculty you lower the standards," Black added. "That's sheer nonsense."

Through initiatives from the newly-appointed provost Nariman Farvardin, officials are working together to develop strategies that will hold department deans accountable for diversifying their faculty.

Charles Rutherford, associate dean for faculty affairs for Arts and Humanities, said that intuitively the minority representation has increased, and most departments are aiming for diversity.

"It waxes and wanes but there has never been a marked drop off," Rutherford said, who adding that nearly every college has an equity officer that oversees recruitment. "We encourage departments to be inclusive in their candidate pools and to cast their nets very broadly."

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