Diversity is a defining feature of the State of California, and is a source of innovative ideas, creative accomplishments, and a variety of values and worldviews that arise from differences of culture and life experiences. The University of California strives to reflect this diversity in its students, faculty and staff. Achieving such diversity is a high institutional priority, and is integral to UC San Diego’s achievement of academic excellence.
Diversity has an educational, social, economic, political and ethical value for our university. It enriches the ability of UC San Diego to accomplish its academic mission by broadening and deepening the educational experience through interactions of students and faculty from multiple backgrounds and perspectives. Diversification offers social participation and mutual understanding to all Californians regardless of their heritage, orientation or situation. It provides equality of access and opportunity so that every segment of society can contribute to and benefit from our economic future. It enlightens and empowers constituencies of all types to engage in our democracy in an increasingly multicultural state, where voters and political leaders are likely to be more supportive of an inclusive, representative, and heterogeneous university. Finally, embracing faculty, students, and staff from all social sectors constitutes a moral obligation in a nation with a long history of unequal treatment of disadvantaged groups. For all these reasons and more, UC San Diego must continue and strengthen its commitment to diversity.
Through the campus Principles of Community, we strive to create a climate of respect, fairness, cooperation and professionalism and to promote innovation and leadership by utilizing the talents and abilities of all. In creating an environment of equity for all, a particular effort is made to remove any barriers which hinder equal opportunity in employment, particularly for those groups who historically have often experienced discrimination in the area of employment.
Academic Affairs values diversity, equity, and inclusion as essential ingredients of academic excellence in higher education. To this end, the following initiatives have been implemented.
Efforts to Recruit, Support, and Retain a Diverse Faculty:
Best Practices for Faculty Recruitment:The director of the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity (OADEO) assists faculty search committees in utilizing the best-practice recruitment strategies to develop large, well qualified, and diverse applicant pools in faculty recruitments. The director also helps to clarify the University’s responsibilities for compliance with Federal and State regulations. The director works in close collaboration with the Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Equity.
Appointment of Associate Vice Chancellor, Faculty Equity: The Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Equity (AVC-FE) position was initiated in July 2008, and reports to the Executive Vice Chancellor, Suresh Subramani. Jeanne Ferrante, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Associate Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering, serves as the first AVC-FE. Her overall goal is to change practices and culture that are barriers to faculty equity at UCSD, with a focus this year on recruiting. She works closely with Associate Chancellor and Chief Diversity Officer Sandra Daley and the Faculty Equity Advisors.
Appointment of Faculty Equity Advisors: First appointed in 2008-2009, UCSD’s Faculty Equity Advisors are respected senior faculty members from each division/school who provide advice and information about practices that advance faculty diversity and excellence. Faculty Equity Advisors work closely with their Dean/VC, department chairs, faculty, and search committees to foster proactive search activities, promote best practices, and review departmental recruit forms. In the future, they will help develop opportunities for faculty advancement and enhanced campus climate.
The Task Force for the Recruitment, Support and Retention of Underrepresented Faculty: Established in Spring, 2010 as one of several UC San Diego Administrative Commitments to Improve Campus Climate. Co-Chairs AVC-FE Jeanne Ferrante and Professor Danny Widener, the Faculty Equity Advisors, and additional members of the campus community with analogous goals form the core of this new, permanent Task Force which has been charged to promote and incentivize efforts and practices that will help create additional opportunities for hiring, and greater success in retaining and supporting underrepresented faculty in all academic disciplines at UC San Diego, including those areas related to gender, ethnic identity, race and class. Outreach to potential faculty will include both graduate student and postdoctoral efforts in cooperation with the Dean of Graduate Studies and Vice Chancellor for Research (Task Force Charge Letter).
NSF PAID: "Leading Through Diversity": Through a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Partnership for Adaptation, Implementation and Dissemination (PAID) program, UCSD is partnering with UCI, UCLA, UCR, and UCSB to provide a leadership program for department chairs, deans, and senior administrators. Funded from January 2007 to January 2010, the program has included joint retreats, symposia and workshops.
Faculty Mentoring Program: Implemented in 1999, the departmental mentoring program requires that all new tenure-track faculty be assigned senior faculty mentors; newly recruited tenured faculty are given the option of having a mentor.
Diversity Curriculum Initiatives: An important part of our effort to recruit a diverse faculty has been to broaden the curriculum with content related to diversity and to allocate faculty FTE specifically for interdisciplinary recruitments in these areas: African-American Studies Minor (AASM); African Studies Program; California Cultures in Comparative Perspective (CCCP) Initiative; Chicano/a and Latino/a Arts & Humanities (CLAH); Diaspora and Indigenous Studies; and the International Migration Studies Minor.
The Faculty Career Development Program (FCDP) supports the research or creative activities of junior faculty in order to enhance their progress toward the Associate Professor level. The program also recognizes and rewards individuals who have promoted diversity and equal opportunity.
Diversity Matching Funds: A recommendation of the Diversity Task force was to provide incentives to address workforce pipeline challenges of increasing the future pool of prospective historically underrepresented faculty. In response to this recommendation, the EVC has established a matching fund to support creative initiatives from the General Campus Divisions, in which Deans may request matching funds to support initiatives which they feel could positively impact faculty diversity, especially the recruitment of new faculty.
Efforts to Recruit and Retain a Diverse Academic Affairs Staff:
Academic Affairs staff diversity initiatives emphasize a collaborative relationship between the EVC, divisions and operating units. There is a focus on awareness, outreach, education and training, providing information to help prospective and current employees make informed decisions about a career at UCSD. Academic Affairs is committed to the assurance of fairness and nondiscrimination by encouraging departments to closely monitor the staff selection process for recruitments and promotions, focusing its recruitment efforts on areas with underutilization. The Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor provides leadership and guidance in support of these efforts.
Community Outreach — Increased staffing in this area has allowed for a greater presence at community outreach events and job fairs throughout San Diego. Academic Affairs strives to attain a balance between attendance at general interest job fairs as well as those that target a particular ethnic or community group. The HR Analyst is also active in the campus HR Outreach Council and is trained to provide such HR recruitment program as "How to Get Hired at UCSD," both on campus in and in the community.
Employee Career Development Programs: Academic Affairs continually strives to create and endorse training and development opportunities for staff in order to promote a culture of tolerance, understanding and equal opportunity.
Current Programs include:
Academic Affairs Student Apprenticeship Program is a program designed to offer substantive, practical work-learning experiences to undergraduate and graduate students at UCSD and other local universities in the areas of business and program administration, fiscal management, human resources, information technology, academic research, and student affairs. UCSD AASAP strives to assist the University in its staff outreach and recruitment, training and development, and succession planning goals.
Contributions to the Recruitment of a Diverse Student Body/K-12: Enabling HURM Students to Achieve Success in Higher Education:
The Preuss School UCSD: The Preuss School provides a rigorous college preparatory education for motivated low-income students who will become the first in their families to graduate from college and serves as a model school to study and develop best practices in the preparation of low-income, urban students for college admission. For the third consecutive year, the Preuss School was ranked by Newsweek magazine in 2009 as one of the top 10 high schools in the United States.
Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment, and Teaching Excellence (CREATE), Gompers Charter Middle School (GCMS), and Lincoln High School: Established in 1997, CREATE’s mission is to increase the number of underserved, low-income youths who are eligible for admittance to college. Using The Preuss School as the model, CREATE has extensive partnership agreements with Gompers Charter Middle School and Lincoln High School. CREATE and campus partners have collaborated to provide information to students, teachers, and parents throughout the district, especially at GCMS and Lincoln, regarding University application procedures and financial aid assistance. They also arrange visits to UCSD and other campuses so that parents and students learn first-hand about the college experience.
Cal-Teach: Recruiting underrepresented students in STEM disciplines (science, engineering and mathematics) has been traditionally challenging. Cal-Teach is a joint program between the Physical Sciences and Education Studies, which is committed to improving mathematics and science education for all students. Cal-Teach students train in schools with high populations of underrepresented minority students, and teachers who graduate from UCSD’s credential program choose to teach in these schools where they can make a difference. By partnering with local community colleges to offer the first course in the Cal-Teach sequence, UC San Diego is working to recruit more diverse students into the STEM teaching pipeline.
Diversity Outreach Collaboration and Diversity Coordinator Program: The UC San Diego Diversity Outreach Collaboration is comprised of faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students who work with partner institutions to identify and recruit highly selectable applicants, providing personalized contact with diverse students with high potential for graduate study. Each department has one faculty member designated as Diversity Coordinator, whose responsibilities include active recruiting of prospective minority students. Diversity Coordinators serve as advisors on diversity issues to graduate departments, program chairs, and graduate admission committee chairs.
Graduate Student Retention and Career Development: The Office of Graduate Studies has worked with academic departments to develop best practices for student retention, including an improved graduate student orientation session and an ongoing series of workshops providing career development skills.OGS has also applied for and received a grant from the Council of Graduate Schools to examine factors which may lead some students to drop out of doctoral studies programs.
Yale-Bouchet Society: UC San Diego recently established an institutional chapter of the Yale-Bouchet Society, which is a graduate honor society, established by Yale and Howard universities to recognize outstanding scholarly achievement and promote diversity and excellence in doctoral education and the professoriate. The campus recently recognized its second group of inductees into our local chapter. Efforts are underway to acquire extramural funding to support this and other critical efforts to diversify UC San Diego’s graduate student population.
Postdoctoral Scholars: UC San Diego conducts a postdoctoral scholar program to develop and train postdoctoral scholars from diverse backgrounds to become independent scientists. The program offers professional development workshops; co-sponsors events with campus organizations that promote diversity; creates collaborations with other campus programs to encourage students at various levels to pursue postdoctoral research; helps postdoctoral scholars mentor the next generation of researchers; and develops and maintains policies that would attract a diverse population of postdoctoral scholars.
The UCSD Principles of Community is a collaboratively developed statement, issued by the Chancellor that provides a framework for diversity and affirms the unique contribution of each member of the UCSD community.
The Campus Climate Website is meant to communicate steps taken by our campus community to ensure a better learning and working environment for all of our students, staff and faculty.