 |
| CCA’s Faculty Equity Committee (from left), Terri Smith Long, chair Jim Forkum and Wilhelmina Anthony met recently at the Spring Conference. |
In the aftermath of Prop. 209, the statewide ban on affirmative action passed in 1997, colleges have had to use a variety of indirect methods to attract faculty of color – with varying degrees of success.
In an effort to find which methods work, CCA’s Faculty Equity Committee, plans to conduct a survey of colleges in the next few months that will be used to gather “best practices” in faculty hiring on campus.
Under the leadership of Jim Forkum, a Sierra College physical education instructor, the committee has worked hard over the last year in developing a plan, visiting several campuses along the way to meet with faculty, human resource staff and Equal Employment Opportunity officers.
Not high-tech stuff
“We want to find out which colleges have dedicated positions and what they are doing. This is not high-tech stuff. But we’re just not sure that these things are being done everywhere,” Forkum says.
“The primary issue here is that the profile of our students is changing, and our faculty needs to reflect that,” says CCA Women’s Director Wilhelmina Anthony, who is a counselor at Bakersfield College and a member of the CCA Equity Committee.
California’s public colleges have struggled to increase the number of non-white instructors for years now, and statistics from the Chancellor’s Office reveal that little headway has been made. The percentage of white instructors continues to account for about 75 percent of the faculty on most campuses, while students of color make up about 65 percent of the enrollment.
“What gets to me is the fact that the faculty numbers continue to stay the same,” Anthony says.
Legacy of Prop. 209
At least in the days before Prop. 209 passed in 1997, she noted, campus affirmative action committees were able to encourage departments to hire minority candidates, as well as to offer trainings. Without that encouragement, it’s too easy for departments to replace faculty with a candidate who is similar to the instructor who retired – even if it’s unconscious.
“We need to consider background and culture along with experience,” she says.
Over the past several months, CCA’s Faculty Equity Committee has visited with faculty, human resource staff and Equal Employment Opportunity officers on several campuses to gather information on what is being done to increase diversity.
“At this point, we need to find out what the best practices are,” says Terri Smith Long, president of the Mount San Antonio College Faculty Association and a member of the CCA Equity Committee. “Then we’ll try to compile them into some kind of document that can be used by other colleges. We would also like to highlight colleges in CTA/CCA publications and associated websites whose practices are producing positive results. We are hopeful that this information will motivate other colleges to make similar efforts. In the long run, it is our students who will benefit from these efforts.”
Long noted that at Mt. SAC, for example, each department is asked to identify where faculty positions should be advertised in order to obtain a more diverse pool of candidates.
“The question for us is, what is faculty going to look like when the Baby Boomers start to retire? Will the new faculty reflect the diversity we see in our students?”
