As administrators go through the process of conducting interviews to fill tenure-track positions for the 2007-08 academic year, the University continues to look towards increasing the diversity of its faculty.
The current tenured faculty is 88.6 percent white and 75 percent male, according to Gertrude Fraser, vice provost for faculty advancement.
Bill Harvey, vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity, said the University is ranked 12th among 61 institutions in the American Association for American Universities in terms of the number of black faculty members.
"That sounds better than it is," Harvey said. "We have work to do, absolutely."
The University needs to both work within the community and with applicants to improve faculty diversity, Harvey argued.
Harvey said the goal is to make prospective faculty members feel appreciated when they come to the University.
"On the hands-on level, faculty hiring is done by faculty usually at the department level, so we have to help those departments as they make their decisions," Harvey added.
The University has made progress in its ability to recruit a more diverse faculty, Fraser said.
"We have had consistent success with what I call the yield rate--offers that we have made and how successful we are in getting them to say 'yes,'" Fraser said.
According to Fraser, since the 2003-2004 academic year, the "yield rate" among women has increased from 54 percent to 73 percent for 2005-2006. For black candidates, the yield rate numbers have increased from 31 percent in 2003-2004, to 88 percent for 2005-2006.
"At least with women and African-American faculty, we are learning how to create offers [and] to host candidates at the University to convince them that U.Va. is the place [where] they want to work," Fraser said. "We have been very successful in making the case for U.Va. among the highly competitive, highly-recruited candidates, and I think that's extremely important because we're competing with the top schools for top individuals."
Though significant progress has been made in relation to recruiting women and black tenure-track faculty, the University is continuing to increase its appeal to Latino and Hispanic applicants, Fraser said.
Yield rate percentage increases are the largest for Latino and Hispanic faculty but "overall the number [of tenure-track faculty members] is still very small," she said.
Increased diversity in relation to faculty is something that will improve "conversation"at the University, explained Maurice Apprey, interim dean for African-American Affairs.
"Diversity for educational purposes can intensify and enrich the very content and educational purposes [and] can enrich our community of learning," Apprey said.
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