Many institutions within higher education are committed to hiring a diverse and representative body of faculty and staff, yet few institutions have realized this commitment. Instead, administrative staff demographics have not significantly changed over recent decades. To examine the intersection of institutional commitments and outcomes, this…

Efforts to mitigate bias in faculty hiring processes are well-documented in the literature. Yet, significant barriers to the hiring of racially minoritized and White women in many STEM fields remain. An underreported barrier to inclusive hiring is assessment of risk. Guided by theory from behavioral economics, social psychology, and…

In response to the need for greater racial and ethnic diversity, the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) at Indiana University Indianapolis introduced a mandatory equity and inclusion-centered training program for faculty search committees in August 2023. This training addresses key challenges in achieving faculty diversity, including biases, narrow…

Faculty hiring is an important dimension of diversity efforts across many postsecondary institutions. Many U.S. colleges and universities have released faculty job announcements establishing a demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion as a necessary criterion for applicants. This move is significant because it entrenches…

This case study examined how color-evasive racism operated through search committee members' practices in ways that undermined university policy created to centralize racial equity in faculty hiring. Findings show that abstract liberalism, racialized decoupling, and racialized agency impeded the realization of an equitable search process. Faculty…

Lack of racially minoritized staff is a complex problem, requiring the examination of implicit biases of search committees to better inform and improve institutional hiring practices. Implicit bias describes the attitudes and prejudice we have towards other people, along with the associated stereotypes, without our conscious knowledge, and usually…

This evaluation of faculty hiring examines how eight faculty search chairs at a border Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) discuss how they enact an HSI consciousness when making hiring decisions. Using a combined phenomenological case study approach, the author examines hiring through a conceptual framework that brings together organizational…

Background/Context: Although academic departments have more tools to advance faculty diversity than ever before, many still downplay their own responsibility throughout the hiring process. This results in a cycle of apathy that activates once searches are already under way, and structural change is out of reach. Yet few studies empirically outline…

Despite a growing population, the underrepresentation of African American faculty in predominantly White institutions (PWIs) is a growing concern in the United States. Recent studies indicate PWIs have been focused on increasing diverse student enrollment, particularly among African Americans, but not on recruiting and retaining African American…

Various concerns regarding the vitality and racial/ethnic composition of the academic profession have prompted new study of faculty search committees and hiring paradigms, most notably examining the term "fit" in candidate appraisals. Yet no study utilizes a candidate evaluation framework to investigate whether or not faculty members…

Background/Context: Education scholars have recommended steps for college and university leaders to take toward creating a more racially diverse professoriate. However, the majority of the scholarship is neither empirical nor focused on faculty actively negotiating barriers during search committee meetings to create equitable practices.…

Over the past decade, the number of advertised tenure-track faculty positions in higher education institutions in the United States and abroad has steadily declined while the competition for these positions has become fierce. This situation has caused some scholars to seek perspectives into the factors that influence the tenure-track faculty…

The hiring of faculty is at the heart of developing and maintaining programs, as well as the success and achievement of students, in all educational systems, and the California Community College System is no exception. While hiring practices may vary in terms of specifics in the 72 community college districts in California, basic principles and…

Despite stated commitments to diversity, predominantly White academic institutions still have not increased racial diversity among their faculty. In this article Robin DiAngelo and Özlem Sensoy focus on one entry point for doing so--the faculty hiring process. They analyze a typical faculty hiring scenario and identify the most common practices…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the perceptions of African-American faculty at a predominantly white institution (PWI), who have served on their institution's search committees, about the effectiveness of the hiring process in hiring African-American faculty. The specific methodology used in this study was narrative…