1

Growing and Nurturing a Diverse Faculty Rosario Ordonez-Jasis, Department of Reading Lisa Kirtman, Department of Elementary and Bilingual Education Mark Ellis, Department of Secondary Education Maria Grant, Department of Secondary Education Ellen Junn, Associate Dean, College of Health and Human Development California State University, Fullerton

2

Agenda/Topics To Be Covered

Growing and Nurturing a Diverse Faculty• What is R.A.C.E.?• Background, context and administrative support • Past accomplishments• Current Initiative• Accomplishments, future goals and challenges• Conclusions and Q&A

3

R.A.C.E. = Researchers And Critical Educators• Established in 2002 by a group of originally untenured faculty of color.• Three objectives: (1) support diverse faculty’s scholarship, teaching,

and professional service; (2) foster awareness and support of research and issues related to equity, class, culture, race, gender, linguistic and other forms of diversity; and (3) develop support networks with other faculty across campus and at other colleges and universities.

• In order to promote campus visibility and credibility, RACE was established as a formal faculty organization that meets monthly with organizational bylaws, officers, and includes membership of an associate dean as the dean’s office liaison.

• Program activities are kept separate from the tenure and promotion process and membership is inclusive of all faculty ranks, disciplines and ethnicities.

• The associate dean’s role is critical and functions to provide independent, supportive advice and liaison with and seek resources from the deans’ offices as needed for activities.

• See http://hhd.fullerton.edu/race/

4

Administrative Support and Relationships

• RACE remains a grassroots faculty organization that works closely with two deans’ offices.

• Historically, RACE was established by interdisciplinary faculty in one larger college, that later divided (now College of Education and College of Health and Human Development).

• Partnering with the associate dean permits access to deans’ office resources (e.g., funds for activities, staff for event planning, mass communication via email distribution lists).

• Connections with associate dean facilitates connections with other campus units (Faculty Development Center, Office of Equity and Diversity), engendering support from the provost and president.

• RACE accounts are established and reconciled by accounting staff in the dean’s office.

5

Past RACE Activities• RACE sponsors a university-wide Distinguished Scholar Series that

highlights the contributions of guest speakers whose scholarly pursuits center on diversity issues (e.g., Antonia Darder, Peter McClaren) or hosts special events such as the "Unconstitutional Deportation of Mexican Americans During the 1930s" which highlighted the untold stories of survivors of this period.

• RACE also hosts regular faculty workshops (e.g., successful grant-writing, effectively teaching diverse student groups), organizes research roundtables for members to collaborate and receive peer feedback on their research, and offers informal socializing and support opportunities (e.g., summer barbeques).

• RACE members have gone on to present their research and work with the organization at a number of national conferences (AERA, AESA, HACU, U MN Keeping Our Faculty).

6

Current RACE Initiative: Recruitment & Retention

• Recently, the university president announced plans to search for 100 new faculty per year for the next five years in order to keep up with growth and faculty retirement projections.

• Thus, this past year, RACE officers applied for and were awarded a competitive campus-wide grant intended to address faculty recruitment, with an emphasis on recruiting diverse faculty.

• California State University, Fullerton currently is the largest campus (36,000 students; 1,700 faculty) in our 23-campus CSU system with a “majority minority” student population.

7

Current RACE Initiative: Recruitment & Retention

Modest funds ($6,000) from the campus-wide Mission and Goals grant will enable RACE to complete the following activities:

1) Compile and disseminate an annotated bibliography of books, articles and videos regarding successful recruitment and retention of faculty of color. Purchase additional resources to be housed in the campus’ Equity and Diversity office library and selected books and materials (e.g., Smith, Turner, Osei-Kofi, & Richards, 2004; Turner, 2002) to be housed in each dean’s office to be available for departmental search committees.

2) Host and maintain a campus recruitment and retention website for untenured faculty featuring links to many relevant resources both on and off campus, such as research and grant opportunities, teaching support, diversity listservs, family and housing issues, and social networking.

8

Current RACE Initiative: Recruitment & Retention

3) Create protocol for increasing the pool of qualified candidates of color. This includes identifying institutions with large numbers of minority doctoral recipients; determining organizations that attract qualified candidates; and identifying resources to assist with recruitment. A process and procedure for contacting these institutions including sample letters and suggested contact practices will be developed and distributed university-wide to assist with faculty search efforts.

4) Provide more opportunities for mentoring as a way to combat isolation and overcome systemic barriers for faculty of color (Aguirre, 2000; Carter & O’Brien, 1993), such as increasing membership in RACE via monthly mentoring workshop luncheons for untenured faculty to discuss relevant topics and provide social support and networking.

9

Accomplishments on Current Initiative• RACE’s most immediate goal will be the dissemination of recruitment

materials and information. All eight colleges on campus will receive the materials no later than Fall 2007 in order to be useful for future faculty searches.

• RACE created faculty resource website will be launched Summer 2007. • Tentative Website

Monthly mentoring luncheon workshops have been successful.• Campus-wide forum is planned for April, featuring a nationally

recognized expert to address deans, department chairs, personnel and faculty search committees on these issues.

• Dissemination of information to other institutions will continue throughout the year via presentations and publications.

10

Future Goals• A more distant goal is to seek funds to extend future work, with RACE

members visiting institutions and attending conferences having the largest number of diverse doctoral recipients in order conduct face-to-face recruiting.

• Future funds might be used to establish partnerships with universities to create a pipeline of doctoral candidates in which completion of a CSUF master’s degree in combination with other requirements would guarantee admission into a high quality doctoral program.

11

Challenges

Several challenges remain:

• Raising the visibility and legitimacy of RACE among the remaining deans

• Increasing faculty membership across all colleges• For the volunteer RACE officers, balancing the work of RACE with their

own primary scholarly, teaching and other service responsibilities.

12

Conclusions

• RACE has achieved a number of important accomplishments, and has created a safe, constructive and proactive community of support for faculty of color on campus.

• Placing the locus of control within a grassroots faculty organization results in multiple benefits, such as guaranteeing that recommendations and actions truly emanate from and are accepted by the faculty.

• In addition, this innovative faculty organizational structure is cost and labor effective and can be easily adopted by different campuses in reflecting their own unique faculty culture and needs.

• Faculty of color and administrators who actively partner closely with one another represents an innovative, powerful and effective way of supporting and nurturing the new professoriate.

13

Questions & Answer

Thank you!

Contact Info:Rosario Ordonez-Jasis, rjasis@fullerton.edu (714) 278-

5951Ellen Junn, ejunn@fullerton.edu, (714) 278-4365