Monday, September 22, 1997 UCLA lags on diversity FACULTY:
Campus policies affect both hiring process and retainment of
faculty
By Hannah Miller
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
"If there were a shortage of talented high school basketball
players, would UCLA slack off on its recruiting efforts?" asked
Associate Vice Chancellor Raymund Paredes. "No. It would try as
hard as possible for the candidates available."
"And that’s what we need to be doing for faculty and staff,"
said Paredes.
The 20-year effort to hire women and ethnic minorities into
professorships, inching along at all universities in the nation,
came to an abrupt halt at UCLA in January. Although it was
officially the Regents’ decision to abolish affirmative action, the
UCs, it turned out, had never been very strong on the employment
front.
"We’ve never done a lot about faculty affirmative action," said
Paredes. "If you have a doubt about that, just look at the
numbers."
The numbers that Paredes cites are fairly poor, for some groups
more than others. In the last 15 years, there has been a UC-wide
net increase of one black or Latino faculty member per campus per
year. So why is UCLA still over 75 percent white male? The reasons
lie in such divergent factors as the hiring process for academia,
UCLA’s quest for prestige and the subjects that are taught.
Affirmative action was first implemented in the 1970s, and in
the 20 years since, has taken many different approaches.
By offering fellowships for women and minorities, the UCs have
tried to increase the pool of doctoral candidates. Partnerships
with the historically black colleges have been tried, but didn’t
result in significant change. Faculty members, many with families,
didn’t want to relocate over such huge distances.
So what does work?
What has been most successful, Paredes estimates, are attempts
to diversify the faculty through the diversification of the
curriculum.
Take ethnomusicology, for example. The ethnomusicology
department is "the model, I suppose," admits its director, Tim
Rice. Its permanent faculty of 10 consists of three black, one
Japanese American, one Native American, one Arab American, one
Latino and three white professors.
Such diversity, more representative of California’s changing
population, comes from the subject matter itself. Ethnomusicology
draws its subject material from all world cultures.
It is more openly political than most fields. "Ethnomusicology
has been about inclusiveness, about including the people," Rice
said. "You say, ‘What people are we going to study?’ And then you
see what their music is."
Because ethnomusicology surveys all cultures – including that of
American ethnic groups – the practitioners of those forms are
generally diverse.
That type of inclusiveness could be applied in other
departments. "Other humanities departments have always allowed
aesthetics to completely overwhelm politics," Rice said. Music
departments, for example, tend to focus on European classical
music, and therefore are less diverse.
Diversifying the curriculum has worked in other departments. "We
are most successful at attaining diversity when we actively develop
areas in which women and minorities are likely to be present in
significant numbers," Paredes said. "If you look at the English
department, it’s changed in character over the last few years by
stressing ethnic literature. Now it’s the strongest program in the
nation."
For departments where the subject matter is much more empirical,
considerations of diversity are harder to pinpoint. They are also
less likely to be stressed.
The Jules Stein Eye Institute (JSEI), for example, has a faculty
of 30, and hires about one or two new faculty members a year.
Although JSEI faculty search committees must contain one minority,
the permanent faculty has four Asian Americans, no blacks or
Latinos, and only three women.
"Not many women apply for positions here," said Bartly Modino,
JSEI’s Director. "We basically focus on qualifications. Background,
training and grades carry most of the weight."
"But if you count our residencies and fellowships, there’s not
much of a problem," said Modino. "There have been times where the
male to female ratio is 50-50." The JSEI’s faculty are also
diversified by joint appointments with the King/Drew medical
center, whose faculty is primarily underrepresented minorities.
The JSEI’s numbers are part of an overall pattern nationwide:
although women and minorities are prevalent in research capacities
and as grad students, they don’t necessarily get the tenured
jobs.
Earning a doctorate is the step that officially puts an academic
into the pool for a faculty position. The percentage of doctorates
earned by women has grown since the 1960s, to almost equal those
earned by men. But the percentage of doctorates earned by
minorities still remains small, and tends to be limited to certain
fields, like education.
Although that effectively puts them in the pool for
professorships, women and minorities tend to cluster at two-year
colleges, community colleges and liberal arts colleges. The more
prestigious the institution, the smaller the numbers of women and
minorities … and research universities like UCLA are at the top
of the prestige food chain.
So expanding the curriculum isn’t enough. Research has shown
that any attempts to increase diversity must also impact the hiring
process itself.
Like most other universities, UCLA fills faculty positions from
within, with the efforts of a departmental search committee. Before
a hire can be made, the results of each search must be presented to
the Academic Personnel office for review, to make sure that efforts
have been made to look for underrepresented groups.
Of the average 100 faculty positions filled each year, only a
few searches are returned as too limited. And because the Academic
Personnel Office only has veto power, it must rely on the
department chairs themselves to take initiative.
And the departments vary in their level of interest in the
subject. Some departments have expressed a clear interest in
diversity, creating a pattern that replicates itself. Departments
like English, sociology and urban planning are successful because
studies show that diversity attracts diversity. Women are more
likely to get hired into faculty positions at universities that
have a higher percentage of women. And the same goes for race.
The faculty hiring process is often quite complex. All searches
for faculty positions are advertised in the journals that
correspond to the field, making each search seem quite open. But
many departments will often go shopping for a faculty member with
specific qualifications – a certain type of expertise, say, or a
name in the field.
If a department goes shopping for a senior professor who can
bring added prestige to the university, the search will draw from
those who have been around longer. And those are usually white
males, as the bulk of women and minority professors tend to be
younger, and in non-tenure-track positions.
The numbers show that this is a crucial time. Between the 1990s
and the early 2000s, 40 percent of the UCs’ current ladder-rank
faculty will retire through turnover and through voluntary early
retirement programs. At the same time, enrollment is expected to
increase and a 10th campus will open. Many pundits have said that
this is a turning point for the makeup of academia as we know
it.
And affirmative action won’t be around.
"We’re in a bit of crisis," Paredes said. "We’ve already lost
several distinguished black faculty members in the last few years.
Very distinguished universities have gone after them. And sometimes
UCLA doesn’t move as quickly as it should."
"To service the state, we must maintain access to this
university at all levels, because of the changing demographics of
California," said Paredes.