Cluster hiring can lead to increased faculty diversity

Cluster hiring is used to bring multiple faculty into inter- or transdisciplinary research areas or curricular programs. According to Laura Severin,

Initially, institutions may be lured to new interdisciplinary initiatives by the promise of federal research dollars, but there are often other, equally important motivators. Students are demanding academic programs focused on real-world issues. Employers are asking for graduates who can work in teams across disciplinary specialties. And, despite budget cuts, governmental agencies, nonprofits, and businesses are looking to higher education to help them solve the "big problems," such as global climate change, food security, health care, political instability, and new-age literacy. Cluster hiring would seem to move us forward into this new, more urgently collaborative world.

Now a new report suggests that cluster hiring has a positive impact on diversity.

A new report from the Coalition for Urban Serving Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and the Association of American Medical Colleges, which have partnered as Urban Universities for HEALTH, tackles those questions and concludes that cluster hiring -- when done right -- is a powerful way to build both institutional excellence and faculty diversity.

“Although the process was originally designed to expand interdisciplinary research, [cluster hiring] also impacts both faculty diversity and components of institutional climate, including the learning environment, collaboration, community engagement and success of faculty from all backgrounds,” reads the report, which identifies diversity not only in terms of race, ethnicity and gender but also perspective, ideology and methodology.

Cluster hiring programs, it continues, “have the potential to improve institutional excellence over all by breaking down silos, reallocating resources to benefit the whole institution and attracting innovative, nontraditional scholars.”

New report says cluster hiring can lead to increased faculty diversity | InsideHigherEd