ANNUAL REPORT
on
RECRUITMENT AND HIRING TO THE FACULTY, ADMINISTRATION AND STAFF
2003/2004
and
THE PRESENT FACULTY, ADMINISTRATION AND STAFF
2004/2005
OFFICE OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND EMPLOYMENT INITIATIVES
COLGATE UNIVERSITY
December 1, 2004
There will be a question and answer session on this report at the Faculty Meeting
December 6, 2004.
Please read it in advance and bring it with you to the meeting.
Background
In the current Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Plan we have committed ourselves to working towards the goals of hiring at least 20% faculty of color and at least 40% women faculty into new full-time appointments, both term and tenure stream.
From an examination of the most recent availability statistics (Table J), it is clear that our current goals are quite modest for both women and faculty of color. The availability statistics show that in 2002 women earned 44.7% of all Ph.D.s and people of color 21.3% of U.S. Ph.D.s. This represents an increase of 1.1% from last year for women, and a 1.3% increase for people of color.
All Full-time Faculty
There are 33 new full-time faculty at Colgate this year (Table A). This includes seven athletics faculty, (four white men, two white women, and one man of color); one library faculty (a white man); five tenure-stream faculty (one white woman, three white men, and one man of color); and twenty academic term and replacement faculty (twelve women, including one woman of color, and eight men, including one man of color). In other words, for this group of full-time faculty, we hired 12.1% faculty of color, and 45.5% women faculty. When we consider only the full-time academic faculty (excluding the athletic and library faculty), we hired 12.0% faculty of color, and 52.0% women faculty.
For faculty of color, the numbers are extremely disappointing. This was our least successful hiring season since 1985/1986, and far below our 29.3% faculty of color hires last year. Our recruitment and hiring average for that twelve-year period stands at 21.9%.
We were more successful in meeting our hiring goal for women in full-time faculty positions this year, rising to 45.5% of new hires from last year’s seven-year low of 36.6%. When we look at the academic faculty positions alone, the figure rises to 52.0%, which is considerably above the 40% established in Colgate’s Affirmative Action Plan.
Tenure-stream Faculty
Of the five tenure-stream positions, three went to white men, one to a white woman, and one to a man of color (Table B). For these long-term positions, we hired 20.0% faculty of color, which met our minimum hiring goal for faculty of color. We also hired 20.0% women faculty, but that is only half of our stated goal of 40% of new tenure-stream appointments. Clearly, the small number of hires makes it difficult to speak of meeting goals in the hiring of either women or faculty of color.
The five tenure-stream hires made for this year brought us to a total of 225 full-time tenure and tenure stream positions, an increase of ten from 2003/2004 (Table D). This increase is due to the fact that for the first time, the academic faculty count includes thirteen faculty who hold Category I appointments (three men, including one man of color, and ten women, including one woman of color). The decision to include Category I faculty in the full-time count was based on the fact that as a result of changes in the Faculty Handbook Guidelines for promotion and tenure, a number of Category I faculty received tenure last year, and it can be expected that more will stand for tenure in the coming years. The long-term nature of these appointments, combined with the fact that for all intents and purposes Category I faculty contribute to the university as full-time faculty, made it clear that the most appropriate way of counting Category I faculty was as full-time tenure-stream faculty.
Other Faculty
We also have on campus eleven Distinguished Visitors who enrich our educational mission (Table E). Four of these positions went to white men, two to white women, and five to women of color. It should be noted that this group of Distinguished Visitors includes our Dissertation Scholars, outstanding individuals from historically underrepresented groups who are invited to teach a reduced course load at Colgate while they are completing their dissertations.
The total number of full-time faculty (Table C) is 307. This figure represents an increase of nineteen from last year, but includes for the first time Category I appointments in the academic faculty count.
Eight faculty in the tenure stream left Colgate during 2003/2004, of which five were women (Table F). Retirements account for two of the departures, while spousal/partner and family concerns were a critical factor in the decision of four tenure-stream women faculty to leave Colgate, pointing again to the fact that the college needs to consider a number of retention issues, including spousal employment, housing and day care. While no faculty of color left the tenure stream in 2003/2004, it is crucial that the University environment be supportive of the diversity we are seeking through our efforts to attract and retain women and faculty of color.
After adjusting for new hires and departures, the current faculty number represents an increase of only 0.1% in the share of faculty of color, and an increase of 2.2%in the share of women faculty (Table C). In a faculty body of 307, we have 43 full-time faculty of color (14.0%) and 124 women faculty (40.4%) this year. White men now account for 52.1% of all full-time faculty, which is down 2.4% from last year.
Given that this is the first year in which Category I faculty are included in our full-time faculty count, it is helpful to separate out the numbers of Category I faculty for the purposes of comparison with previous years. Without Category I faculty, the figures in Table C for our current faculty are 13.9% faculty of color (41 of 294), unchanged from last year, and 38.8% women faculty (114 of 294), an increase of 0.6% over 2003/2004. White men comprise 53.7%of all full-time faculty (158 of 294), which is down 0.8% from last year. If one were to consider only the academic faculty without including Category I, library or athletic faculty, then faculty of color constitute 16.0% (38 of 238), women are 38.2% (91 of 238), and white men are 53.4% (127 of 238) of the total.
In tenure and tenure-stream positions, the share of faculty of color stands at 16.9%, an increase of 0.6% over last year’s high of 16.3% (Table D). The share of women faculty in tenure and tenure-stream positions rose by 1.0% to 38.2%. While this figure indicates progress toward our goal of 40% women faculty in tenure-stream positions, it must be remembered that the increase is due to the inclusion for the first time of ten women faculty with Category I appointments in the count. Without those Category I faculty, the number drops to 35.8%, which is a decrease of 1.4% from last year, and our lowest figure since 1997-1998. If the Category I faculty of color are likewise removed from the total tenure and tenure-stream positions, the number is essentially unchanged, going up 0.1% to 17.0%.
Women and faculty of color in the tenure-stream are less “tenured-up” than the average for the college (Table H). While 68.4% of all tenurable full time faculty are tenured, the percentages for women and faculty of color are 67.4% and 57.9% respectively. The percentages for women and faculty of color are up from last year’s numbers, which were 63.8% of women faculty, and 57.1% of faculty of color.
To summarize our figures for this year with respect to the current total tenure and tenure-stream positions, we hired one woman and five resigned for a net loss of four tenure-stream women faculty. We hired one faculty of color and none resigned for a net gain of one. The inclusion of Category I faculty in our counts provides a more accurate picture of the presence of women and people of color in our academic faculty, but the numerical increases must be recognized as a correction of the figures rather than as new progress toward our affirmative action goals. The impact of the Category I faculty on the count is most apparent in the increase in the number and percentage of women in the tenure stream, while the change is less significant with respect to faculty of color (Table D).
The number of hires that occur in a given year has a serious impact on our ability to achieve our affirmative action goals, as the comparison of our hiring in the last two years clearly demonstrates. In 2002/2003, we made 41 total hires, 36 of which were academic positions and 24 of which were tenure-stream positions. Last year, by contrast, we made 32 total hires, 25 of which were academic positions with only five tenure-stream hires. The reduced number of hires means fewer opportunities to make affirmative action hires, thus increasing the urgency for each and every search to draw its candidates from as broad and diverse a pool as possible. It is also clear that for meaningful progress to be made, not only must we be successful in hiring women and faculty of color over a number of consecutive years, but we must find creative solutions to the problem of turnover and retention of those same faculty as well. Progress made one year is easily wiped out the next, and only successful affirmative action hires repeated over a period of several years will have a lasting impact on the numbers of women and people of color on our faculty. It is essential that departments involved in searches this year continue to pay close attention to possible ways of increasing the diversity of the applicant pool and to employ strategies that make it more likely that women and candidates of color will emerge successfully from the hiring process.
Full-Time Positions
A total of 39 full-time positions were authorized for recruitment, and they resulted in 34 hires, one of which deferred until 2005-2006 and therefore does not appear in the count for Table A. Two positions closed without a search, and three searches failed. A tenure-stream search was extended and the position filled by a term appointment.
In six cases, more than one offer was made before a position was filled; in one position, a first offer was declined by a woman of color, and in another case a first offer was declined by a white woman.
A total of 34 faculty were hired into full-time positions, including seven in athletics and one in the library. We received a total of 1583 applications, ranging from a low of seven for a term-position to a high of 163 for a tenure-stream search. Not surprisingly, the smallest number of applications tended to be for short-term positions, although two tenure stream positions this year did not result in hires at least in part because the applicant pools were considered insufficient in quantity and quality. The wide disparity in the number of applicants indicates that different departments are likely to face very different search environments. Strategies and recommendations advocated in the name of affirmative action therefore need to be tailored and adjusted to specific circumstances, and it is particularly important for all departments to employ strategies for maximizing the number and diversity of their applicant pool in the future.
In order to evaluate our performance and our hiring practices, we would like to know the actual composition of the applicant pool. Often we cannot identify ethnicity and gender from the applications directly. Therefore, we try to get an idea of the composition of the applicant pool by looking at the self-identification forms that have been returned. This year, 810 self-identification questionnaires were filled out and returned to Colgate for full-time positions, an overall response rate of 55.1%—down from last year’s 57.1%. Two searches did not send out the self-identification forms because they were conducted quickly late in the year, and one search was conducted by a search firm that did not employ our self-identification forms. When we look at only the academic faculty hires, then 1050 applications were received, and 611 self-identification forms were returned for a response rate of 58.2%. The response rate was much higher for tenure-stream positions, where 72.3% of applicants volunteered their information on ethnicity and gender.
Of the self-identification responses, 52.5% were returned by white men; 21.5% by white women; 19.9% by men of color; and 6.2% by women of color. Thus 26.1% of all responses came from applicants of color and 27.7% from women applicants. Since applications are more readily classified by gender than by ethnicity, we can compare the composition of the pool of self-identification responses with the percentages obtained from the actual applicant pool. The total applicant pool consisted of 76.1% men (compared to 72.4% of the self-identification responses) and 23.9% women (compared to 27.7% of the self-identification responses).
In the past, these numbers have been close enough for us to have some confidence in the usage of the self-identification responses when we estimate the composition of the applicant pool. However, this is the second year in a row that the sample and population statistics have been significantly different, and we cannot make the assumption that the self-identification responses are representative of the total applicant pool. Changes made to the self-identification form last year do not appear to have increased significantly the response rate, and we are not able to gather reliable data to benchmark our progress with respect to affirmative action in our hires. The Human Resources Department will be phasing in new applicant tracking software in 2005, and the expectation is that this automated, on-line process will provide much more complete data than we have been able to compile in the past. Implementation of this tracking software will begin with administrative and staff searches, and will include faculty searches once it can be tailored to the needs of individual academic departments.
Interviews
Of 33 completed full-time faculty searches on which the Affirmative Action Office has records, four involved off-campus interviews. Our records show 61 off-campus and 91 on-campus interviews.
During this hiring season, white men received 51.7% of all interviews, and 44.1% of the jobs; white women received 27.2% of the interviews, and 44.1% of jobs; men of color received 12.2% of the interviews and 8.8% of the jobs; and women of color received 8.8% of all interviews and 2.9% of the jobs.
As with last year’s searches, we cannot discern a consistent pattern pointing in the direction of systematic bias in the relation between applications, interviews, and search outcomes based on gender or ethnicity. Only a close monitoring of the data over several more years will show us whether such a pattern exists at Colgate, but especially for candidates of color, these data suggest that Colgate does not offer interviews out of proportion to jobs.
Throughout our hiring experience, inconsistencies do occur: records do not match perfectly; individual candidates, even individual searches, refuse to fit neatly into the categories we establish for them; single individuals can mislead by altering percentages and proportions in our situation of fairly small numbers overall. We are struggling to make progress in meeting our affirmative action goals from year to year and to increase the proportions of women and individuals of color on our full-time faculty. This is the kind of endeavor that requires continued, vigilant, good faith effort. We must always work to become more aware of barriers in our hiring practices and to pay more attention to the subtle biases that may influence the employment opportunities of our job applicants.
A good starting point remains Section III.C., Plan for Action, in our current Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Plan. Accessed from Colgate’s Homepage under “Offices and Services,” subcategory “Affirmative Action,” it gives suggestions for ways to improve departmental search practices and supplements the required steps provided in the Dean’s Guidelines for Recruitment and Hiring that are revised and distributed every year. An additional resource is the “Guide to Effective Searches,” which is available online under the “Information for Department Chairs” link from the “Dean of the Faculty” website. It is our hope and expectation that everyone who is involved in a search would want to take advantage of the useful strategies that already have been developed and employed on campus.
In the Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employment Plan 1997, the Staff Affirmative Action Committee set two goals for the hiring of people of color. These goals were based on availability statistics for the administrative, professional and support staff categories. The first goal is to increase the percentage of employees of color in the administrative and professional staff to 14%, 8% of which should self-identify as Black or African-American. The second goal is to increase the percentage of employees of color in the support staff to 3%.
As displayed in Table K, the percentage of employees of color in the administrative and professional positions decreased this year from 10.5% to 9.7%. Numbers increased for other employees of color (Asian, Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American) in administrative positions (a gain of 1.0%), but dropped for the same group in professional positions (a decrease of 1.3%). The percentage of Blacks dropped by 0.3% to only 1.7% of administrative positions, and by 1.5% to only 3.2% of professional positions, which indicates that we are not progressing toward our established goal of 8% Black/African American administrators and professionals.
Out of 37 total searches to fill administrative and professional positions, 28 searches were coordinated through the Human Resources Department, and the data for those searches is included in Table L. In this group of 28 searches, two employees of color were promoted into administrative positions, and four of the new employees hired were people of color. In addition, there were two searches not coordinated by the Human Resources Department, one of which resulted in the hire of a woman of color. Of seven searches coordinated by the academic divisions, three resulted in the hire of candidates of color. Thus, out of the 37 total searches for administrative and professional positions, ten or 27.2% resulted in the hire of individuals of color, of which four or 10.8% were Black or African American.
Given the relative success of our efforts to hire and to promote individuals of color into administrative and professional positions, it is discouraging to see that we have actually reversed our modest progress toward our Affirmative Action goals over the last several years (Table K). While we hired ten people of color, two were internal hires, and we lost nine other administrators and professionals of color for a net loss of one. Clearly, retention continues to be an extremely important factor hampering our ability to attain our Affirmative Action goals for administrators and professionals.
The percentage of employees or color in support staff positions is 2.3%, still short of the Affirmative Action goal of 3%. For the 31 searches completed between September 1, 2003 and August 31, 2004, two new staff employees of color were hired, but one resigned before this reporting period closed. There are currently seven employees of color holding positions in the secretarial, clerical, technical, Campus Safety, and Buildings & Grounds staff, a number unchanged from last year. The identification and recruitment of applicants for these positions continues to be a challenge.
Table A: Academic, Athletic, & Library Faculty Recruited and Hired for Full-time Positions for Academic Years: 1992-93 to 2003-04
Table B: Faculty Recruited and Hired for Full-time Permanent Tenure-Stream Positions for Academic Years: 1992-93 to 2003-04
Table C: Full-time Academic, Athletic, & Library Faculty at Colgate University for Academic Years: 1993-94 to 2004-05
Table D: Faculty in Full-time Tenure or Tenure-Stream Appointments for Academic Years: 1993-94 to 2004-05
Table E: Faculty Recruited and Hired as Distinguished Visitors Serving in Academic Years: 1993-94 to 2004-05
Table F: Full-time Permanent Tenure-Stream Faculty Leaving Colgate in Academic Years: 1992-93 to 2003-04
Table G: Composition of Tenured Faculty
Table H: Total--Women/Minority Faculty in Tenure-Stream Appointments, by Tenure Status, or Academic Years: 1980-81 to 2004-05
Table I: Inventory of Faculty by Department and Division, 2004-05
Table J: PhDs Available - 2002 Data
Table K: Progress Against 1997 Goals in the Administrative, Professional and Support Staff
Table L: Recruitment and Hiring in the Administration and Support Staff