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Syracuse University’s Board of Trustees in early March released its plan for increasing faculty diversity, which includes investing $50 million in faculty hiring and retention initiatives over the next 10 years.

The Board of Trustees visited SU’s campus in February 2020 and met with 17 groups of students, faculty and staff, according to the report. During these visits, the board said it observed a lack of diversity within SU’s faculty.

As part of the board’s strategic plan on faculty diversity hiring, SU will hire at least 70 additional faculty and 100 postdoctoral scholars from underrepresented backgrounds.

The university will also spend $5 million on programs designed to retain faculty of underrepresented backgrounds and to help transform the culture at the school. Faculty of color at SU have said they would like to see the university do more to make the school a viable long-term workplace.

The university will fund $40 million of the $50 million and will fundraise for the additional $10 million.

In accordance with state, local and federal law, the funding will provide incentives for search committees, deans and department chairs to recruit a diverse candidate pool, rather than directly hire faculty of underrepresented groups.

SU will evenly split the funding between search committees within its schools and colleges for three years. Departments will be able to hire faculty for about 15 new positions every three years, which will total to around 50 hires in the department over 10 years, according to the report.

Deans and department chairs will likely use this funding to fill vacant faculty positions, according to the plan. Replacing vacant spots with faculty of underrepresented backgrounds will more rapidly increase faculty diversity, the board said in its plans.

Last year, the university launched the Diversity Opportunity Hires Initiative to support its efforts to hire teaching and research faculty from diverse backgrounds through its Cluster Hires Initiative, which places scholars with similar research interests into multidisciplinary groups, or clusters.

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More coverage on diversity hiring initiatives at SU:

• Is a faculty diversification fund enough? Some faculty don’t think so.
• SU restarts initiative to hire faculty from minority groups
• SU to increase faculty diversity through new hiring initiative

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The university will now cover 70% of the salary and benefits for these new hires — a 20% increase — with schools and colleges covering the rest of the costs.
The board expects that about 17 of the 69 positions allocated under the Cluster Hires Initiative will be from underrepresented groups.

Salaries for the new hiring program and the second round of Cluster Hires Initiative will be 15% higher than budgeted for the first round of Cluster Hires and for SU’s Signature Hires Initiative, a plan the university announced in 2019 to hire 100 new faculty over the course of five years.

The board also plans to fund 10 postdoctoral scholars on campus by the second year of its postdoctoral scholarship program. The program will provide opportunities for scholars to become tenure-track faculty.

Scholars will be required to teach one course each year in their area of expertise, which will meet students’ calls for a population of instructors that better represents the campus population, the board said.

This program will cost $1.8 million each year to operate, with $70,000 stipends and $5,000 of professional development funds for each scholar per year.

Under this hiring program, funding will also go toward travel conferences, summer salaries and other one-time research needs for faculty.

“The university can and should be prepared to make adjustments within the faculty diversity hiring program to better meet the needs of the university’s commitments on diversity, inclusion, equity and accessibility during the first ten years and beyond,” the board said.

Published on March 17, 2021 at 11:45 pm

Contact Sarah: scalessa@syr.edu | @sarahalessan