Johns Hopkins University recently announced it is committing more than $25 million in new funding over the next five years toward recruiting and retaining diverse faculty members.
The details of the faculty diversity plan were announced by Hopkins Provost Robert C. Lieberman and the deans of the university’s schools in a letter to the campus community. The initiative, the letter said, came out of the annual deans’ meeting last spring and was developed over the past year after intensive data trend analyses, consultation, comparison with peer institutions and other efforts.
The initiative “will support our firm commitment to locate, attract, and retain the best and most talented faculty, representing a broad diversity of backgrounds, thought, and experiences,” the letter read. “Each academic division of the university will develop and execute a detailed plan, tailored to its specific academic discipline, to enhance faculty diversity and cultivate an environment that is inclusive of diverse scholars.”
The diversity plan comprises five major components:
-New search protocols for each department created with an eye to recruiting diverse talent. Search committee members will also receive unconscious bias training and diversity advocates will be included.
-A fund that provides up to $100,000 per appointee to support the targeted recruitment of extraordinary minority and women scholars.
-A new fund that supports visiting scholars for short or long stays, which may also prove as a means of recruiting diverse talent to the university.
-A postdoctoral fellowship program will prepare designees for tenure-track faculty positions, particularly in fields where minorities and women are underrepresented.
-A $50,000 annual award will be given by the provost’s office to a full-time Johns Hopkins faculty member who demonstrates excellence in research related to issues of equity, diversity and inclusion.
According to the university’s Diversity Leadership Council’s 2014-2015 report, faculty from underrepresented backgrounds comprise on average 2-3 percent of tenure-track professors.
Johns Hopkins is among several universities—including Brown, Yale and Harvard—that recently announced multi-million-dollar diversity and inclusion initiatives following student protests nationwide.