Efforts to attract minorities still getting off the ground

In response to President Shapiro's call for more diversity in the faculty and student body, Associate Provost Joann Mitchell announced last year that the University would develop initiatives to bring more minorities to campus.

But in the past year — while expanded recruitment processes, summer programs and increased funds have been implemented to bring prospective minority students and candidates for administrative positions to the University — specific initiatives to bring minorities and women to the faculty have yet not been developed, according to Mitchell.

She said the provost's office was still intent on developing programs to increase diversity in the faculty. Statistics released last year showed that only 13 percent of tenured professors were women, and the University had far fewer black assistant and associate professors than peer institutions.

"We've been working really closely with departmental heads," Mitchell said. "We're still asking for help in coming up with concrete plans early in the fall."

Sociology professor Patricia Fernandez-Kelly labeled the process of developing initiatives to bring minorities to the faculty as a particularly arduous task.

"There is a disjuncture between what the University wants and what the pool is," she said, adding that members of minority groups who are qualified to teach at Princeton are in very high demand.

Fernandez-Kelly suggested that networking could be the key to attracting more minorities. "[Minorities] don't think of applying to a place like this," she explained. "There needs to be a mechanism created — a social connection."

While minority networking might be a solution to the lack of minorities in the faculty, Mitchell said the University was concentrating on increasing the diversity of the student body by introducing high school students to Princeton earlier.

"We want to have an impact while people's minds are really open," Mitchell said, noting that the admissions office brought in a specialist in recruiting students of color last year.

The admissions office also began a minority host-stay program this fall, allowing students to visit the University overnight before applications are due, she said.

Vice President for Human Resources Joan Doig said two new initiatives have been created in the past two years to diversify applicant pools for administrators and staff.

Currently, no University senior-level administrative officers are black, 3.8 percent are Hispanic and 19.2 percent are women.

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Special effort searches, for example, allow the University to target possible minority candidates by having "recruiters work with the [human resources] office to identify appropriate choices for advertising and posting in professional schools and online," Doig said.

When a minority candidate is found, the provost office's newly established Diversity Initiative Fund provides money for hiring managers to meet him, Doig added.

However, because the initiatives are aimed to achieve long-term results, Mitchell warned against expecting quick changes.