Diversity Advocates Spur More Diverse Hiring

(from CUPA-HR) Oakland University has developed a program to train diversity advocates on hiring committees in order to improve faculty diversity across campus. The Diversity Advocate Program provides faculty members with actionable best practices for inclusive hiring, while also making space to engage in dialogue and, when necessary, to ask and work through difficult questions in a collaborative setting. Diversity advocates receive research-based training on the institutional value of diversity, best practices for recruiting a diverse applicant pool, mitigating bias in evaluating candidates, facilitating difficult conversations among hiring committee members, and creating an inclusive environment for newly hired faculty. Since 2020, every search has included a diversity advocate, and the university has increased faculty from underrepresented minorities from 52, when the program started, to 59 in 2020. 

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