To hire more women and people of color into faculty positions, UC Davis needs to reward effort and success.

At the same time, the campus needs to hold accountable all those involved in the recruitment process, recommends the Task Force on Faculty Recruitment.

"The task force strongly believes that this two-part recommendation, above all others, will provide the necessary catalyst for change," the group says in its May 1 report to the chancellor and provost.

The report was distributed this week to the campus community for comments to be considered by Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef and Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Grey before the report's recommendations are implemented for the 2000-01 faculty hiring season. The deadline for submitting comments, in care of Assistant Chancellor Sally Springer, is June 9.

In addition to the call for vigorous campus leadership, targeting 80 percent of the hiring at the junior professoriate levels is expected to yield a much more diverse recruitment than in recent years. Over the past several years, junior faculty members have comprised an average of 62 percent of the new hires.

A 31-member task force, chaired by Barry Klein, vice provost for academic personnel, was appointed last fall to make recommendations regarding hiring practices at UC Davis. The group was asked to recommend best hiring practices for the campus that would meet the objective of recruiting outstanding new faculty who share the campus's commitment to excellence and diversity.

A large decline in the percentage of women faculty hired over the past two years triggered the report.

"A few of these recommendations are new or offer a different way to look at recruitment, but what makes this report unique is that it puts everything together in one place," Klein said. "It is proactive and creative -- and yet at the same time we can actually implement it."

The report places responsibility for the diversity task squarely on the shoulders of deans, chairs and the other administrators responsible for recruitment and diversity, including the Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Personnel. In addition, those who make major efforts in support of diversity should be rewarded in different ways, including through the merit and promotion process, the report says.

Committee members said this report holds great promise for changing the direction of faculty diversity.

"The recommendation that is different in this report is we want people to think about the ramifications of diversity and to have them justify the outcome in their searches," said Barbara Horwitz, professor and 1991-98 chair of the Section of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior.

She said effort as well as success should be rewarded, since units should not be faulted if they make an offer to a woman or person of color who turns it down.

Fellow task force member Leo Chalupa, current chair and professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior, added, "Faculty members are no different from other people: They work on rewards. I think people being acknowledged and rewarded on issues that the university considers a pressing issue is a good thing."

Changing the hiring ratio

The task force has also recommended that the campus hire no more than 20 percent of new faculty at the senior level.

This change, beyond all others, will bring more women and people of color to the faculty, said law professor Martha West.

"Junior" faculty members include assistant professors and early associate professors, within several years of making tenure. The task force recommends that each dean work with departments to ensure that the 80-20 ratio of junior to senior hires is achieved over a rolling two-year cycle.

The reason behind the suggested change in levels of hires is that more women and people of color are in the hiring pools at the junior level, West said. She points out that one of UC Davis' best years for hiring women and people of color, 1994-95, was also a year in which a higher percentage of junior hires occurred.

"One can really only see the impact of level of hire over time," West said. "For the 10-year period of 1988-98, among assistant professor hires, 37 percent were women; among faculty hired as associate or full professors, 25 percent were women."

Best practices elsewhere

Horwitz, who chaired the task force's subcommittee on best practices, said her group researched hiring practices at the University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UCLA and University of Virginia, among others.

One approach, conducting faculty searches with broader position descriptions that identify general areas of expertise, surfaced as a useful mechanism because the practice can create a bigger pool of candidates and provides more flexilibity to find diverse candidates. The report also suggests cluster hires within broad areas.

"There are two advantages of cluster hiring," Horwitz said. "You can advertise to the world that here's an area where the campus is willing to put in resources, and it offers the opportunity of bringing in a cohort of individuals who can develop an affinity with each other, even if they're not in the same department, so they don't feel so isolated."

The report mentions the importance of a campuswide culture of support: mentors for junior faculty, annual receptions for faculty women and faculty of color, campus groups and policies that provide a welcoming environment, the appointments of more women and people of color to academic leadership positions such as deans, and the institution of training programs for deans and chairs.

Also broached in the report is the idea of using postdoctoral fellowships as a way to identify potential candidates for faculty positions within the UC system.

Klein said this idea of "grooming your own people" is being discussed among campus provosts as a strategy of keeping excellent candidates within UC.

Importance of the Partner Opportunities Program

Recognizing the reality that faculty members are increasingly partnered with fellow academicians will also go a long way to improving the hiring rate for women and people of color, said Klea Bertakis, professor and chair of family practice in the School of Medicine and a member of the task force.

"I just lost an important recruit, a woman in the medical school, due to our inability to effectively address the needs of her spouse," she said.

The report recommends that the campus follow a UC Irvine practice of setting aside up to 10 percent of anticipated growth positions to support partner hires.

Importance of data

The central administration has also been given the task of obtaining timely data and communicating it to the campus. These activities include collecting information on the "availability pools" of women and persons of color at institutions producing the largest number of doctoral recipients in each discipline. In addition, the administration has been asked to work with the schools and colleges to ensure that data pertaining to new hires are collected in a consistent way to help identify campuswide hiring trends.

Task force member Bill Jackson, a professor of chemistry, said he was particularly pleased with the recommendation that the campus needs to set up a mechanism for monitoring progress toward a more diverse faculty. The task force said the college/school/division recruitment committees that were established as part of the recruitment study should be continued for a three-year period and that a small central-campus task force be assigned to monitor the overall progress over the same period.