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UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SYMPOSIUM:
The Administrator's Dilemma
During a break-out session at the University of Washington (UW) symposium, 34 college and university administrators addressed some of the major institutional hurdles to achieving a successful diversity program. The top challenges fell into two major categories: a lack of institutional funding or other support for such programs, and a need to change faculty involvement in and attitudes towards such programs.
After quickly identifying the two key areas, group members devoted the rest of the session to the bigger dilemma of finding solutions for faculty involvement.
"As administrators, we shouldn't just blame the faculty," one said. "They are overwhelmed by the scale of the issues. Perhaps we should be thinking of better ways of getting the success stories, the best practices out to the faculty?"
Others agreed that their faculty were also overwhelmed by the "publish or perish" mentality of science and by juggling teaching, research, and service requirements for tenure. With most universities placing a heavy emphasis on research, faculty will likely view a diversity program as another thing to add to the "bottom of the list of priorities."
Another administrator suggested that, instead of presenting a diversity initiative to faculty as something "new" to do, it should be presented as something they are already doing—like teaching or mentoring—but in a slightly different way. "But use a model. Don't reinvent the wheel," he added.
Since changing the pedagogy of science courses has been a crucial part of some diversity programs, the administrators discussed ways to incorporate curriculum reviews into already-stretched faculty schedules. One avenue would be to give a sabbatical for redesigning a course, suggested a speaker. Another person proposed hiring a faculty member to specifically work on pedagogical research.
Finally, another administrator noted, changing faculty attitudes will take a sustained effort. "There's a period of time with new faculty to change attitudes of a whole department over time. As you are recruiting faculty, you say, 'This [achieving diversity] is important to us, and we are working on it now.'"
Overall, the group felt that, to make a real impression with faculty, the reward structure for tenure and promotion must change. "As administrators, we can exert some top-down pressure by adding one step to the merit process" to account for diversity work, said one administrator.
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