U administrators attest that proper efforts are being taken to recruit and retain faculty members from diverse backgrounds, but growth is slow and minority numbers have stalled in the double digits.
“You’ve got to be fair (when looking at statistics) — it’s hard to hire these kinds of people,” said Dave Pershing, senior vice president for academic affairs. “But the fact that we’ve gone up, that’s a good thing.”
Once minorities are hired, Pershing said, administrators often have difficulty keeping them at the U.
“If they come here and are successful, other universities see that — they’re hot property.”
“The numbers are pretty telling,” said Octavio Villalpando, associate vice president for diversity.
In the 2006 Fall Semester, 80 percent of the U’s 1,419 faculty members were white. The remaining 20 percent consisted of 17 blacks, 6 American Indians or Alaskan Natives, 48 Hispanics or Latinos/as, 106 Asians or Pacific Islanders and 47 non-resident aliens. There were 59 faculty members whose ethnicity is unknown.
Despite claims of progress, the numbers were not much different five years ago.
In 2002, 82 percent of U faculty was white and almost 18 percent was composed of ethnic minorities.
The U has had just six Native Americans on faculty for the past five years, representing only 0.4 percent of the faculty population for 2006.
To reverse this trend, Villalpando said the administration is focusing its energy on recruitment to ensure that when positions are available, the pool of applicants is diverse.
“This is very difficult for many reasons,” Villalpando said, pointing out that Utah is not viewed as an ethnically diverse place.
“It’s very hard to convince potential applicants to apply,” Villalpando said.
In an effort to entice candidates from different ethnic backgrounds, Villalpando said community members with the same ethnic background attend interviews with applicants.
Villalpando said the U also encourages applicants to bring their families along when they visit.
“Utah is a very family-oriented place, and faculty who have family are concerned with going to a place to raise their kids — we want to show that they can have a positive experience,” he said.
The central administration tries to create incentives for departments to find racially diverse faculty members, offering to pay part of the applicant’s salary.
The U has also started a pre-doctoral program that recruits racially diverse students who are finishing their doctoral work. The program encourages them to come to the U, write their dissertation, get to know the school and hopefully stay permanently.
While some numbers are growing more rapidly than others, Pershing said the U is not focusing on any one racial group, instead just trying to “grow them all.”
Racial gaps are not the only concern facing the U — it also has a history of gender disparities. In 2006, female instructors and professors only accounted for 27 percent of the faculty population.
Pershing said this disproportion often depends on the field — women are more likely to teach in humanities than the sciences, he said.
For example, there are no female faculty members in the physics department of 31 males. Pershing said the administration is working with the physics department to bring in a female astronomer.
Pershing also said there are programs to encourage women to go into more male-dominated fields, such as chemical engineering.
Villalpando said the struggle for more racially diverse faculty is not limited to the U.
“Almost every university in the country can do better,” he said,
In the two months Villalpando has served as director of diversity, he said this effort is at the top of his list.
“Progress is hard, but we maintain the commitment,” Pershing said.