Equity Advisor Roles in Faculty Searches

Woman looking through blue spiral ballDepartment Equity Advisors should make clear to the department who they are and what they do:

  • Advocate
  • Consult
  • Support
  • Liaise
  • Monitor

Advocacy around new FTE requests and position specifications

  • The FTE call letter states as one of the main campus priorities for new FTE requests: “Requests in accordance with UC Regents Policy 4400 that would enable Berkeley to recruit outstanding scholars in research, teaching, and service who will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity at our campus.”
  • Equity Advisors should participate in discussions about the direction of the department and hiring goals, and how they will fit with this priority.

Engaging your unit around goals for faculty searches

  • In accordance with Berkeley’s policies and Principles of Community, all new faculty we hire, regardless of personal characteristics or life circumstances, should be committed to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and contributing to a positive campus climate at Berkeley.
  • New faculty will shape the direction of the institution for the next 20 – 40 years.
  • Having a diverse University faculty, in all its forms, is an institutional goal, intimately connected with excellence.
  • Where does the department currently stand with respect to aggregate demographics? 
  • Diversity is also defined broadly, including the variety of personal experiences, values, perspectives, and worldviews that arise from differences of culture and circumstance. Such differences include race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, language, abilities/disabilities, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, geographic region, perspective, and more. 

Consultant to Search Committees on search and evaluation processes

  • Be sure the committee understands the Equity Advisor role in the search, particularly regarding the search plan, applicant pool, short list, and search report.
  • Review information in the Senate Search Guide – committees should address all areas before the search begins.
  • Discuss how to have carefully designed outreach and evaluation processes (Research to Support Faculty Searches)
  • Suggest effective outreach methods to increase the diversity of the applicant pool
  • Participate in outreach activities as much as possible
  • Ensure that contributions to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are a component of the research, teaching, and service selection criteria (recommend that all short list candidates are asked about their potential to contribute to equity and inclusion at Berkeley during their "chalk talk" or other relevant interview sessions)
  • Ensure that proposed evaluation processes will be fair to all candidates
  • Advocate for using evaluation processes and tools that require committee members to back up opinions with evidence

Support to committees

  • Support the committee with difficult or tricky situations, for example: Unsolicited information, faculty who advocate inequitably for or against a single candidate, conflicts of interest, de-selection that appears unfair, failure to follow the approved search plan, committee members who feel marginalized or pressured, missing strong candidates who straddle more than one subfield, concerns about how candidates are treated during campus visits, etc.

Liaison to the Office for Faculty Equity & Welfare (OFEW)

  • OFEW is available to consult with Equity Advisors (and search committee members) at any time during the faculty search process. Some situations (potentially of a legal nature) should be brought to OFEW’s attention quickly.

Monitoring search processes and outcomes

  • Equity Advisors are not search police or “rubber stampers”; do not be pressured to approve at the last minute.
  • Serve on the search committee or be an advisor to the search committee. If the Equity Advisor is not a member of the search committee, one member must serve as the liaison to the Equity Advisor. The liaison will play the active role in the search, and consult with the department Equity Advisor as needed.
  • Consult with the chair or dean of the department or school to ensure that each search committee is committed to a fair search process.
  • Given proactive outreach efforts applicant pools should reflect benchmark data as much as possible, and long lists and short lists should generally reflect the demographics of the applicant pool.
  • Review the diversity of the availability pool and the applicant pool. Suggest proactive measures to enhance the diversity of the applicant pool. The search can be extended if needed. Approve the applicant pool if the diversity is satisfactory.
  • If possible, attend the meeting where the long list is discussed to determine the short list (if not serving as a member of the committee).
  • Review the short list of candidates selected for interviews. If this group does not reasonably reflect the applicant pool, consider the evaluation process to date to determine the extent to which candidates may have been inadvertently overlooked. 
  • Sign off on the Search Report if you feel that a fair and equitable search was conducted.

Resources

  • Office for Faculty Equity & Welfare (OFEW): ofew.berkeley.edu
  • Main OFEW office: ofew@berkeley.edu