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Do Chief Diversity Officers Help Diversify a University’s Faculty? This Study Found No Evidence

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When Baylor University began considering the creation of a chief-diversity-officer position a few years ago, many of James E. West’s colleagues said the role could help diversify the institution’s faculty.

That got West, an economics professor, thinking: What influence does an executive-level diversity position have on faculty demographics? West, whose work focuses on higher education, and three Baylor colleagues tried to find out.

In a working paper submitted to the National Bureau of Economic Research, West and his colleagues analyzed the faculty diversity of 462 research institutions in United States before and after they hired chief diversity officers. The paper, which the authors say is the first study of the topic, also looks broadly at faculty hiring and student demographics.

The authors were unable to find any statistically significant increase in faculty diversity after the creation of a chief-diversity-officer position. But, as the paper notes, many other factors can affect faculty diversity, such as underrepresentation in the Ph.D. pipeline.

UW–Madison to Co-Lead $10 Million NSF Grant to Cultivate a More Diverse, Inclusive STEM Faculty

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To broaden participation in STEM programs and fields, the National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced the award of a five-year, $10 million NSF INCLUDES Alliance grant to be co-led by UW–Madison’s Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.

“We are delighted to be among the first recipients of NSF’s INCLUDES Alliance awards,” states Robert Mathieu, an astronomy professor at UW–Madison who co-directs the new alliance. “Despite the importance of a more diverse faculty and the use of more inclusive practices by all faculty to advance learning and student success, improvement efforts have not been as successful as needed, particularly in STEM subjects. For example, underrepresented minority faculty are a mere 8 percent of associate and full professors in STEM fields at four-year institutions. Data show that when diverse faculty members teach underrepresented students, these students achieve at significantly higher rates, shrinking achievement gaps in those classes by 20 to 50 percent.”

UW Opens Latinx, Asian American Student Centers

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A year after the Black Cultural Center opened to great fanfare, the two new “startup centers” will open this year to focus on two other ethnic identities: The Latinx Student Center and APIDA (Asian Pacific Islander Desi American) Student Center will start serving students in smaller spaces in the North Mezzanine area of the Red Gym, which houses the Multicultural Student Center, and work toward grand openings in the spring of 2019.

Role of Chief Diversity Officers Expanding on College Campuses

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Thankfully, after many years, the chief diversity officer (CDO) position is getting its due on college campuses. Institutions have come to realize just how critical a CDO is to getting things done regarding diversity and inclusion as well as to legitimizing these efforts in the eyes of constituents.

How Cornell University Diversified Its Incoming PhD Computer Science Student Body

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When a professor posted a Twitter thread about how Cornell University improved diversity in its computer-science PhD program, it quickly went viral.

“[W]e made a big step in improving diversity of the program. Let me tell you about it,” wrote David Bindel, the PhD admissions chair for Cornell University’s Computer Science department, earlier this month.

It’s clearly an issue that other higher ed leaders are interested in hearing about—the tweet has been shared more than 750 times and drew nearly 2,000 likes.

Computer science is “not just white dudes slinging code, and we all suffer for it when the world thinks that’s what it is,” Bindel wrote.

So how did Cornell do it? Bindel tells EdSurge that last year, Cornell had one Native American applicant, four African American and 17 hispanic applicants to its computer science PhD program, out of a pool of about 850 people. To encourage greater diversity in the next class. Bindel reached out to coordinators of the McNair Scholars Program, an organization that seeks to get undergraduate students—many of whom are underrepresented in graduate education—ready for graduate studies across the United States.

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Contact

Ahna Skop, PhD, DSc
University of Wisconsin-Madison
2426 Genetics
Madison, WI 53706
608-263-1593
skop@wisc.edu

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