University of Wisconsin-River Falls
PA-7: Support for Future Faculty Diversity

During the last year, the Affirmative Action Advisory Committee has: 1. Gathered and organized research on effective recruitment/retention of a more diverse faculty/staff 2. Surveyed those faculty/staff hired within the last 3 years to identify strengths and challenges when it comes to recruitment and retention. 3. Convened an ad hoc group with expertise on communication/publications to look at materials that could be used by university faculty/staff as they interact with persons off campus, particularly when they are attending conferences/meetings where they are thinking about recruitment. That committee used the results of the survey and made 3 recommendations: a. Improve the university’s outreach to potential hires with a more inviting and engaging webpage. That has been completed and is operational. b. Develop new brochure that better reflects our strengths as identified in the survey and also incorporated recommended content that is more inviting to a more diverse audience c. Develop a bookmark with a link to our new webpage that could be carried easily off campus to be used as intro tool (being completed) 4. Gathered regional information from the RF Chamber of Commerce and will be gathering from Woodbury and St. Paul to be used when job candidates visit campus. The information packet (made up of those materials) will include content with diversity in mind. This information could also be taken to conferences when faculty/staff are actively recruiting. 5. Reviewed new search and screen recruiting materials to give feedback about their effectiveness at encourage good practices related to hiring a more diverse faculty/staff UW River Falls is a member of the higher education recruitment consortium (HERC). All of UW River Falls faculty vacancy notices are posted on the HERC website. In recent months, HERC has: · Interacted with over 1,000 future faculty of color at the Compact for Faculty Diversity’s Institute on Teaching and Mentoring · Established a relationship with the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program · Shared HERC information with attendees at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, the Society for the Advancement for Chicanos and Native Americans in Science Conference, and the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity · Advertised in the Hispanic Association for Colleges and Universities conference booklet · Co-sponsored two webinars with the Federal Office of Disability Employment Policy · Created a national Diversity Taskforce that is focusing on HERC’s relationship with HBCUs, HSIs, and Tribal Colleges, planning increased efforts and expenditures on diversity advertising and partnerships, and organizing additional diversity-related member webinars UW River Falls is specifically a member of the upper Midwest HERC, and UMW HERC was responsible for organizing two national webinars on academic publishing in the sciences. Presented by Elsevier, one of the world’s largest science and health information providers, the webinars attracted scientists who indicated the webinars were their first exposure to HERC. Over 137 graduate student and postdoc scientists participated in the webinars.

http://www.uwrf.edu/Diversity/ Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (UW River Falls faculty recruitment notices are posted here) http://www.hercjobs.org/upper_midwest Central HERC website at http://www.hercjobs.org/