Synopsis of Interviews
On Policies Related to Tenured and Tenure-Track Female Faculty in the Sciences, Engineering, and Mathematics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Produced for Rutgers University
Office for the Promotion of Women in Science, Engineering and Mathematics
March 29, 2013
Elizabeth Strickland, Ph.D.
Blackburnian Consulting LLC
Morristown, NJ
/ 203-747-2812
SciWomen Policy Project
Synopsis of Interviews, March 29, 2013
Synopsis of Rutgers University Interviews on Policies
that Affect Female Faculty in the Sciences, Engineering, and Mathematics
Context
In September 2008, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded to Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey an ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Award. The NSF ADVANCE program has the goal of “increasing the participation and advancement of women in academic science and engineering careers.” In order tobetter understand the policy environment at Rutgers in which institutional transformation must be undertaken, a series of interviews were conducted with Rutgers University (RU) faculty and administrators from various positions across the university. A summary of these discussions is found below that includes both “fact-based” information-gathering on university policies and individual perceptions and personal opinions expressed by those interviewed. The entire set of interviewsis summarized by topic with the hope that no specific commentswill be identifiably attributable to any one person. Appendix A lists the individuals interviewed. This project was sponsored by the Rutgers University-Faculty Advancement and Institutional Re-imagination(RU FAIR) initiative managed by the RU Office for the Promotion of Women in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics (SciWomen) and supported by NSF award #0810978.
Interview Methodology
Twelve individuals or small groups were interviewed between August 2012 and December 2012 on the broad topic of Rutgers University policies that affect female faculty in the sciences, engineering, and mathematics by Dr. Elizabeth Strickland, a policy analyst working as a consultant to the SciWomen Office. Each interview was roughly an hour in length (some less, some more) and in most cases was conducted in the office of the individual being interviewed. The interviews consisted of a series of open-ended questions that were tailored to the person being interviewed based on their knowledge area and were documented in hand-written notes made by the interviewer.
The men and women interviewed were selected based on the administrative and leadership position(s)each currently holds (or previously held) and/or their knowledge of institutional historyin the area. An attempt was made to interview someone from each major school and campus (e.g., Camden, Newark, SAS, ENG, SEBS, etc.). Those interviewed included individuals closely associated with the RU-FAIR initiative (e.g., RU-FAIR Professors), as well as those with only a slight familiarity with the initiative. Two potential criticisms of the interview group are fair: (1) The individuals interviewed were selected because of their administrative background,as a consequence, no pre-tenured or early career faculty members were included; and (2) Many additional individuals who, undoubtedly, would have had valuable insights were not included due to the limited number of interview slots.
Interviewees were told that this was a policy project sponsored by the SciWomen Office and NSF RU-FAIR award. Although interviewees knew the context of the project and may have been influenced by this knowledge in making their comments, an attempt was made to ensurethe tone of the interview questionsdid not pre-suppose the existence of any “problems” for female faculty or “deficiencies” in any particularpolicy area.
Themes from the Interviews
Visibility of Women in Leadership Positions
Many of those interviewed expressed dismay at the dearth of women in leadership positions at the university. This observation, more than any other, was one that many interviewees chose as their first comment. Nearly every person interviewed commented on the disproportionate number of academic deans who are men (both currently and historically), even in disciplines such as nursing that traditionally have included a large proportion of women enrolled as students and appointed to the faculty.[1] The lack of women in visible senior leadership positions was viewed by many as indicative of the overall status of women at the university.
Individuals who raised the issue of a lack of women in leadership positions noted that providing women with the opportunity to serve on committees within and outside of their departments was a key means of raising visibility for individual women. Increased visibility for a female faculty member will make her more likely to be thought of and considered for appointment when important university committees are formed or leadership positions are to be filled.
Among the comments that were heard are these: “Women need to hold some positions of power at the university in order to be taken seriously.” and “Women need to have access to positions where they can hire and fire and exercise control over budgets in order to have an impact.”
Decentralized Organizational Structure and Variability among Departments and Schools
Throughout the interviews, the same statement was voiced over and over again: “Well, I can only speak about what I know to be true in my own department…” Several of those interviewed expressed frustration concerning their lack of knowledge about university policies beyond their own department or school. Others were frustrated by their perception that the leaders and administrators above them also did not have a solid understanding of university policies that apply to everyone at Rutgers, how university-wide policies and procedures interact with the ones in their own unit, and whether the policies of their unit were consistent with those of other units. Many observed that little, if any, training opportunities or resources are provided to either faculty or administrators to address university policies and procedures. In particular, several commented that no orientation is provided to new department chairs, deans, or search committee chairs.
In several cases, the frustration interviewees conveyed regarding not understanding university policies beyond their department was tied to a belief that faculty in another part of the university might have some advantage over faculty in their own unit (e.g., “I’ve heard that chairs in such and such unit get a postdoc or more money in exchange for serving as department chair, but we don’t get that here…”). The inconsistencies among departments were raised particularly in the case of whether faculty requesting family leave (for example in anticipation of the birth of a child) could expect to be granted release from classroom teaching and service responsibilities for an entire semester or only part of a semester. The practice seemed to differ among departments and schools. In some cases, the inference was that their own department was either a welcoming/fantastic place or a hostile/challenging place for female faculty, but that in either case the department itself—or the department chair single-handedly—set a climate in the department that was influenced very little by any broader university policies or initiatives. Each department or school, in other words, is viewed as its own autonomous kingdom.
Recruitment of a Diverse Faculty
Among the topics discussed during the interviews, few garnered a more diverse set of comments than issues around new faculty recruitment. It should be noted that the paragraphs below are not intended to be either a comprehensive set of strategies and best practices for the recruitment of diverse faculty or a well-developed vision statement for a broadly diverse faculty, but rather a summary of the comments made by those interviewed.
It was widely acknowledged that faculty searches are conducted with nearly complete independence by departments, with little engagement beyond the department level. Interviewees noted that when asked to serve on or chair a search committee, faculty did not receive much, if any, guidance on how to proceed. In one case described, when a search committee had an interest in conducting a search that would attract a diverse pool of candidates, it did not have a clear understanding of what best practices would be for such a search and found even relatively simple things such as placing ads in publications that might attract diverse candidates to require effort and cost beyond what the search committee felt it could be expected to manage without additional support.
It was also acknowledged that department chairs and deans could exercise leadership in encouraging departments to consider diversity when recruiting faculty. Some deans were described as proactive in ensuring that departments hired more women, some as laissez-faire (i.e., theoretically supportive of recruiting with diversity in mind, but not doing much to encourage this to occur), and some as unsupportive in that they do not consider diversity to be a factor that should be considered in a search and recruitment process.
Examples given of possible support for increasing the number of women hired by department-driven faculty searches included obtaining additional faculty positions for a department when the department conducted an open search and several outstanding candidates who happened to be women were identified, so that offers could be extended to multiple candidates; coordinating with other departments and schools to find positions for the qualified spouses of exceptional candidates; and encouraging departments to postpone hiring for an open slot when candidate pools did not contain a diverse set of candidates or, in the case of a department with a marked under-representation of women, the departmental search committee did not put forward a strong female candidate.
A less proactive strategy for dealing with the scenario where a department-driven faculty search recommended an offer be made to a male candidate because no outstanding female candidates were identified was to proceed with making an offer to the male candidate. Here the reasoning was either that the available faculty line would cease to exist in the future if not filled in the current academic year or that it would be insincere to advertise and solicit candidates from the community a second time for an open position when the assumption was that in the first search the community already had sent forward its best candidates for consideration.
In all the scenarios described above, it was noted that search committees, department chairs, and deans were more likely to be proactive in recruiting female candidates when they felt that this was a priority or vision of those leaders and administrators to whom they report. It was stated by more than one of those interviewed that there was a lack of visible leadership on the issue of diversity in hiring at the highest levels of the university, though a few deans were commended for being committed to a goal of diversity in hiring. In addition, it was mentioned that it could be helpful to have some sort of centralized resource office that could assist departments in coordinating the hiring of spouses as a recruitment tool.
An interesting dynamic appeared in discussions related to diversity in recruitment and hiring— one that also appeared in discussions about gender diversity in all areas of the university: namely, the question of whether diversity and excellence are in opposition to each other, are unrelated, or are inherently intertwined. Some argued (or recounted the argument made by others) that recruitment should be based on a paradigm where excellence is the primary and only concern. In this view, to consider any other criteria as a factor in recruiting would be to dilute the academic rigor of the university. Furthermore, those aligning with this view commented that to consider factors beyond excellence does a disservice to female and under-represented candidates who then may be perceived by themselves and others as needing to prove their merit in an extraordinary way because they were not selected based on being the truly top candidate. In this view to consider factors beyond “excellence” would potentially demean female and under-represented faculty.
On the other hand, the view expressed by several of those interviewed was that for some “excellence” was often a sort of code language for old, traditionalist views of what an exemplary academic life looked like. Therefore, a strategy for recruiting around “excellence” would be to pursue candidates who come from a handful of select universities and who are identified through a network of senior colleagues who are largely white males and often likely to recommend junior colleagues that look like themselves. In contrast, several interviewees said that in order to identify the best possible candidates, you must search the broadest possible range of backgrounds—gender, race/ethnicity, geographical location of training, type of institution from which the candidates come, etc.
Several of those interviewed described their own experiences serving on search committees and noted the clear tension they felt. They commented that even though they themselves were eager to recommend hiring a female or under-represented minority candidate, the search committee acted fairly and appropriately and determined that in the case of this particular search a white man was the best candidate for the job from the pool of applicants. In some cases this was because few, if any, women were in the applicant pool. This speaks to a tension between faculty and leadership searches being conducted entirely independently at the department level as opposed to in the context of an overall university search and recruiting strategy. One interviewer made this particularly notable statement concerning hiring: “A series of good decisions for individual departments may not result in the best outcome for the institution as a whole.”
Several of those interviewed commented on the “cluster hire” strategy that Rutgers has used in the past to recruit a group of faculty around an intellectual theme. More than one person commented on the success of this program in bringing a group of high-quality,under-represented minority faculty to Rutgers-Newark in the program’s first year, but others voiced concern that this was a model that could not be used repeatedly given the potentially limited number of intellectual themes that might attract a diverse set of faculty candidates. Some voiced the complaint that, in their view, by conducting one or two successfulcluster hires, the administration now considered its job to be done as far as diversity hiring is concerned. Furthermore, some noted that in order to be serious about increasing the diversity of the Rutgers faculty, it would be important to implement more than one model for recruitment and not depend on only one model (e.g., cluster hiring). If the goal of a cluster hire is to make a department or school more attractive to female or under-represented minority faculty candidates by providing the potential for camaraderie with like-minded scholars, it could be possible, for example, to consider a cluster hire of a group of women in a science department with a low proportion of women. When asked about this potential strategy, comments ranged from “Great idea, have thought about this myself in the past… would love to see it happen” to “No way this would work. Unless there is an overlap in faculty members’ research focus, there would continue to be intellectual isolation. Furthermore, this could be perceived as treating women as part of a special class of faculty, rather than bringing them into full participation in the department.”
Finally, a number of interviewees commented on the desirability of recruiting and appointing women and under-represented minorities who are at higher faculty ranks given the under-representation of women of color on the faculty in general and at the higher ranks in particular. In this regard, two ideas were put forth. First, that Rutgers could consider making a concerted effort to hire distinguished senior women to Rutgers through a named faculty chair or other mechanism. And, second, that in some past cases when the opportunity to recruit preeminent women to Rutgers arose, the university did not do a good job of managing the recruitment process in such a way that Rutgers was able to secure the attractive candidate. This was viewed by some to indicate a lack of will on the part of senior administrators to recruit distinguished women to join the Rutgers faculty in the same way that they would put energy into recruiting distinguished male faculty. These comments parallel sentiments expressed regarding the uneven level of effort that the university is perceived to put forward to retain female faculty at Rutgers compared to make faculty.
The Tenure Process and the “Stop the Clock” Policy
Very few concerns were raised with the tenure process. Most of those interviewed stated that the tenure criteria were clear and well understood. Many acknowledged that while there was variability in what the expectations were among departments and fields (i.e., value placed on journal articles vs. conference proceedings vs. books as a measure of academic productivity and potential), there was a clear understanding among the faculty in each department about what the criteria for achieving tenure were in that department. No one interviewed voiced serious concerns about women having a more difficult time achieving tenure than men.[2] One caveat to this is anecdotal reports of female faculty choosing to leave the university before the tenure decision (see “Retention” section below). When asked if men had more knowledge about the expectations for achieving tenure gained from informal networks from which women could potentially be excluded, most of those interviewed did not see this as a significant problem. The new Dean of Arts and Sciences in Camden has, apparently, expressed a desire for department chairs to make the tenure requirements more clear, presumably in an attempt to address this potential concern.