By Henry Fisher | March 7, 2022
Photo Credit: Stock Images
The university’s goal for the school year has been to raise the number of underrepresented minorities professionals (URM) according to the Strategic Plan posted on the university website.
The Strategic Plan states that one of their goals for employment is to “increase the number of underrepresented minorities professionals from 15% (2019) to 20% (2024).”
“We set goals so we have measurable targets to strive for and to benchmark our progress,” according to Jordan Carleo-Evangelist, the Director of Communications for the university.
This means that the university should be nearly halfway done with meeting its goal, though other factors have played a part in delaying this, including the pandemic.
“...the University went through an extended period during the pandemic where hiring was very limited, so our ability to make progress on these goals was constrained,” said Carleo-Evangelist.
That constraint did not extend to all parts of the university. According to Carleo-Evangelist, “one area where we have been able to increase staffing… is in our Office of Diversity and Inclusion. That’s important because ODI plays a critical role in ensuring that all other searches for open positions are inclusive and take steps to recruit diverse candidate pools.”
Carleo-Evangelist said that, “...it’s important to keep in mind that not all progress is immediately visible in the statistics. The behind-the-scenes work that’s happening every day to make our searches more inclusive, such as requiring that all search committees receive training in how to mitigate bias in the recruitment and selection process, will yield positive gains down the line.”