The completion of an online tutorial now will be required for all faculty members participating in tenure or tenure-track faculty search committees. University President John T. Casteen, III recently mandated the tutorial, which discusses the best ways to create a diverse pool of candidates, according to Gertrude Fraser, vice provost for faculty advancement.
The online tutorial, developed by Fraser, follows a question-and-answer format offering automatic feedback. Fraser said when a faculty member answers the question correctly the problem is then followed by a discussion and a series of references.
"The main issue of the tutorial is that it has a thematic focus on recruitment of tenure-track faculty to the University," Fraser said. "It's basic focus is that there are best practices that are well agreed on in university settings around how to build a diverse pool of candidates."
The point of the tutorial then, Fraser said, is to convey these practices to search committees so that they may be incorporated into their faculty searches.
"Persons who have done it so far have told me that it answers questions that they had before taking it, that it makes good sense and that it helps them be effective search committee members," Casteen said in an e-mail.
In order to form the content of the tutorial, Fraser said her office used resources such as research by executive recruiting firms dealing with faculty diversity as well as interviews and focus groups conducted at the University to determine what worked well for colleagues.
After piloting the program during the spring semester and receiving feedback from current search committee members, Fraser said the goal is to have the tutorial available to all faculty members by Nov. 21.
"The mandate presently is that if you are going to serve in a search committee, you must take the tutorial," Fraser said. "We want everyone to take it because it's important information to get out."
Casteen said the fact that the University has a search committee training program is not necessarily innovative because these are standard at many top-tier universities, but that "the new program is on-line, simple and current with regard to rules, procedures and information on appropriate search conduct is the new or current element."
Fraser said she hopes this new facet of the faculty-search process will encourage committees to think about ways to get the University's name in front of a "diverse" and "excellent" pool of applicants. The second message of the tutorial focuses on the fact that in order to construct a diverse recruiting pool, recruiting must be ever-present in the minds of search committees, she said.
In addition to those goals, Fraser said she hopes the tutorial can bring attention to the value of service that faculty search committees provide to the University, because bringing in new staff is "probably one of the most important services we do as faculty members."
Fraser said the tutorial and other similar efforts to assist faculty search committees help the University bring search techniques up to the level of peer institutions as well as advance its general mission to create a diverse faculty and student body.
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