University of California, Santa Cruz
PA-7: Support for Future Faculty Diversity

President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
The Program The University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program was established in 1984 to encourage outstanding women and minority Ph.D. recipients to pursue academic careers at the University of California. The current program offers postdoctoral research fellowships, faculty mentoring, and eligibility for a hiring incentive to outstanding scholars in all fields whose research, teaching, and service will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity at the University of California.

Contributions to Diversity and Equal Opportunity
These contributions may include public service addressing the needs of our increasingly diverse society, efforts to advance equitable access to higher education, or research focusing on underserved populations or understanding inequalities related to race, gender, disability or LGBT. The program is seeking applicants with the potential to bring to their academic careers the critical perspective that comes from their non-traditional educational background or understanding of the experiences of groups historically underrepresented in higher education.

Hiring & Recruitment
All faculty hiring committees must have a person designated as the “Diversity Liaison”, who help ensure that fair hiring policies and best practices are followed throughout the search. Fair hiring training is required for the search chair and the Diversity Liaison, and the full committee is invited to the training. The search committee is provided information on writing job descriptions and advertisements to be inclusive and to encourage applicants who can contribute to the diversity of the campus, and a statement of diversity is encouraged of all applicants. Funding is provided for strategic advertising to build pool diversity, and committee members are instructed to perform a large amount of outreach to obtain a diverse pool. The pool diversity is monitored at each stage of the search process, with an expectation of having similar demographics to the graduating PhDs in the field; if a pool has many fewer women than expected, the search can be suspended until additional outreach has been done to diversity the pool (this has happened on our campus). The selection process is based on the advertised criteria, which include contributions to diversity in research, teaching, and service, per university policy. All tenure/tenure-track faculty hiring must go through an open search unless a waiver is approved, and the three types of waivers are all designed to help improve diversity: Presidential Post-doc hiring (hiring of alumni from the UC systemwide post-doc program that awards post-docs to scholars contributing to diversity), Target of Excellence hires (one of the key criteria is contributions to diversity, in addition to outstanding achievement in the field), and Partner Hires (which have been found to be disproportionately important for female faculty). Once here, development is assisted by our Mentoring Program for Faculty, as well as our Diversity and Inclusion Certificate Program. Ongoing salary and promotion review criteria explicitly includes contributions to diversity in research, teaching, and service.

The University of California Systemwide Committee on the Status of Women addressed the systemwide need for additional professional development for women and the need for additional lactation facilities.

Systemwide Advisory Committee on the Status of Women (SACSW): http://sacsw.universityofcalifornia.edu/