#cluster hiring

[equityatiowa]

Equity at Iowa, with the help of Cluster Hire initiative data from the UI Provost’s Office, can now present a more complete picture of all seven clusters. In our earlier post, based on four clusters, we rued the impact, however unanticipated, the Cluster Hire Initiative has had on gender equity in the faculty ranks. Now, with the data all in, we applaud those Clusters (most notably, the Sustainability Cluster and the Aging Cluster) which have not contributed to a depressed hiring rate for female faculty. We note that 27% of the cluster faculty as a whole are female, an improvement on the 12% female faculty percentage we calculated when we considered only four of the seven clusters.

The fact that 27% of cluster-hired faculty are female may not seem worrying when that percentage is compared to 33%, the percent of total tenured and tenure-track faculty who are female, according to the Provost’s data. But we hasten to note that the Cluster Hire Initiative has dragged a not-particularly-impressive ratio of female to male faculty down by six percentage points.

The impact of the Cluster Hire initiative on the hiring of ethnic/racial minorities is generally positive. Cluster-hired faculty who fall into the overall category of ethnic/racial minorities (a category that includes the designation “International”) make up 27% of all cluster-hired faculty, whereas members of ethnic/racial minorities make up only 21% of tenured and tenure-track faculty as a whole (data taken from Provost Office July 2016 PowerPoint slide comparing cluster faculty composition with tenured/tenure-track faculty across campus). Black faculty comprise 4.2% of cluster-hired faculty, as compared to 2% of tenured and tenure-track faculty as a whole. Hispanic faculty make up 5.7% of cluster-hired faculty, as compared to 4% of tenured and tenure-track faculty as a whole. Asian faculty make up 15.7% of cluster-hired faculty, as compared to 10.8% of tenured and tenure-track faculty as a whole. International faculty make up 14.2% of cluster-hired faculty as compared to 2.4% of tenured and tenure-track faculty as a whole. (Non-cluster data based on 2014 numbers in Provost Office Data Digest.)

University of Iowa Provost Office Data Digest

https://provost.uiowa.edu/files/provost.uiowa.edu/files/wysiwyg_uploads/Digest.pdf

[equityatiowa]

UPDATED 12 December 2016: The University of Iowa Cluster Hire Initiative, rolled out as the centerpiece of the 2010-2016 Strategic Plan, was introduced in a document entitled “Meeting the Grand Challenges of the 21st Century.” The aim of this new hiring initiative was to facilitate multidisciplinary scholarship, instruction, and public service. “Many of today’s most exciting and important research frontiers transcend traditional boundaries,” notes the UI Cluster Guidelines. The document ends by stating that the hiring plan should include measurable targets to document its long-term viability, and also “demonstrate a commitment to diversity as appropriate.” Five years later, the tentative quality of that final phrase seems prescient. Although the UI Cluster Hire Initiative has been counted a success on many fronts, it has been disastrous in its impact on gender equity. (Its impact on racial and ethnic diversity also merits attention.)

As our data charts show, out of a total of 40 cluster hires, 35 cluster faculty members are male and 5 are female. If we look at the individual data for the separate clusters, the diversity impact looks even more dire, with female faculty entirely absent from the Public Humanities in a Digital World cluster, and representing only 14% of the Public Digital Arts and 9% of the Informatics cluster hiring.  As a point of comparison, we might look at the hiring record of the UI English department in the period from 1992 to 2012: 22 female faculty and 16 male faculty. That is, women represent 57% of the total English department hiring during this period.

The original planners of the UI Cluster Hire Initiative did not set out to create faculty clusters that mirror the gender composition of a circa-1960 department meeting, but the effect of the hiring initiative has been nearly the same as if they did.

Coincidentally, just as we were writing this post, the UI Strategic Plan for 2016-2021 was released. This plan advocates for increased hiring of faculty from underrepresented groups, a corrective that the Cluster Hire Initiative (of which there is no mention in the new plan) has made especially necessary.

Note: We focused on the four clusters for which hiring data is easily accessible: Informatics, Obesity, Public Digital Arts, and Public Humanities in a Digital World. It is difficult to distinguish cluster hire faculty from already existing faculty on the web pages of the other three clusters (The Aging Mind and Brain, Genetics, and Water Sustainability), and so to discern the specific hiring initiative impact. We will supplement our post with a display of data from the three uncharted clusters if and when this data becomes available to us.

For the English department numbers, we relied on current faculty data, supplemented by a reconstituted count of those faculty who were hired during the period from 1992-2012, but who have since left the University of Iowa. We will correct our post if supplemental evidence suggests that our numbers are inaccurate.

UPDATE: We have updated our post to accurately reflect data provided by the Office of the Provost. With appreciation for this new data, we are working on a new cluster hire post that will cover all seven clusters.

Sources:

Meeting the Grand Challenges of the 21st Century: The University of Iowa Cluster Hire Initiative Guidelines

https://provost.uiowa.edu/files/provost.uiowa.edu/files/ClusterHireInitiativeGuidelines.pdf

University of Iowa Cluster Hire Initiative: White Paper Assessment, November 2012

https://provost.uiowa.edu/files/provost.uiowa.edu/files/ClusterWhitePaper.pdf

Strategic Plan 2016-2021

http://provost.uiowa.edu/files/provost.uiowa.edu/files/wysiwyg_uploads/StrategicPlan2016-2021.pdf