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16A - Tuesday, April 15, 2008

N ew s The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com


HIRING
From Page 1A
The report presented to the Sen-
ate Assembly, a group comprised of
University faculty members, used
data provided each year by Univer-
sity Human Resources to examine
trends in faculty hiring across racial
and ethnic categories - white,
black, Asian and Hispanic.
The percentage of minority fac-
ulty has seen steady increases in all
professorial ranks: professor, asso-
ciate professor and assistant profes-
sor.
Asian faculty has increased, more
significantly in associate and assis-
tant professorial roles than in the
full professor position. While the
report shows that the proportion
of Hispanic faculty members has
increased at the rank of professor
and less steadily at the associate
rank, the percentage of Hispanic
professors at the assistant professor
position is at the same level todayas
it was in 1994.
Significant increases in black fac-
ulty can only be found at the associ-

ate level. At the professor rank, black
faculty has only increased slightly,
while there has been a decline inthe
proportion of black assistant profes-
sors.
CMU Chairman Billy Joe Evans,
a Chemistry department professor
emeritus, called the lack of growth
for black and Hispanic hires at the
assistant professor level "particu-
larly troubling" because the Uni-
versity feeds its own faculty into
higher professorial ranks through
that position.
The data show that the percent-
age of minorities receiving assis-
tant professor appointments has
increased significantly by more
than 10 percent from 1994 to 2008.
"Overall there has been no signifi-
cant change in the hiring rates of
black and Hispanics," the report
concludes.
Senior Vice Provost Lester Monts
said in an e-mail interview that the
University values the study from
CMU.
"Dr. Billy Joe Evans and the Com-
mittee for a Multicultural Univer-
sity have done an important service
for the University," said Monts, who

attends the committee's meetings.
"Their faculty perspective on these
important matters is vital to our
moving forward on these issues."
In the report, CMU also broke
down data down by individual
schools and compared levels of
minority composition by school
unit. The Stephen M. Ross School
of Business outpaces all other units
in proportion of minority faculty,
with this proportion consisting
overwhelmingly of Asian faculty.
The Gerald R. Ford School of Pub-
lic Policy, the School of Social Work
and the University's Dearborn cam-
pus come in closely behind the Busi-
ness School in their proportions of
minority faculty.
While the Gerald R. Ford School
of Public Policy had a 30-percent
increase in minority faculty - the
greatest of any school or college - it
does not have a single black faculty
member, according to the report.
In an e-mailed statement, Public
Policy Dean Susan Collins defended
her school's hiring processes and
diversity policies.
"Our faculty search commit-
tees are charged with developing

as extensive a pool of candidates as
possible," she said. "This has helped
us identify strong candidates from
under-represented groups for some
of our searches, and is something
we will continue to take very seri-
ously."
Collins said one of the major
roadblocks to hiring more minority
faculty members in Public Policy
is the lack of black, Hispanic and
Native American candidates in the
"educational pipeline" of econom-
ics, political science and sociology
Ph.D programs, which she said was
the typical source for assistant pro-
fessors.
"Increasing the numbers who
make it through the pipeline is a
critical part of any long-term strat-
egy for addressing concerns about
lack of faculty diversity," she said.
Collins also said that many mem-
bers of the Ford School faculty are
involved in work to bring more
minorities into their discipline
through mentoring and special
training programs.
Evans said the the data his com-
mittee examined refutes the "pipe-
line" argument.

"National data from the Nation-
al Science Foundation shows that
Ph.D production for all minorities
has been increasing," said Evans,
who's in his first year as chair of the
committee.
The NSF-produced Survey of
Earned Doctorates shows that the
number of black doctoral degree
recipients exceeded the number of
Asian and Hispanic doctoral degree
recipientsfor every year this decade.
The Law School ranks lowest at
the University in minority faculty
composition. Just over 10 percent
of the Law School's faculty is com-
prised of minorities. The report
shows that the Law School has no
tenured Hispanic faculty members.
"It is true that we do not current-
ly have a tenured research professor
who is Hispanic, despite a hiring
process that keeps diversity inter-
ests in mind," said Law School Dean
Evan Caminker in an e-mail inter-
view. "Our personnel committee
casts a wide net in terms of who and
how many candidates it chooses to
interview, taking into accountmany
aspects of diversity," he said.
Monts said that because the Uni-

versity administration does not hire
faculty, all it can do is provide sup-
port to the schools and colleges as
they seek to create a diverse faculty.
University officials contacted for
this article praised programs like
ADVANCE, whose website states it
is concerned with "promoting diver-
sity and excellence at the Univer-
sity of Michigan," and its committee
STRIDE - Strategies and Tactics
for Recruiting to Improve Diversity
and Excellence - as credentials for
the University's attempts to aug-
ment the number of minority fac-
ulty members.
In ADVANCE's handbook for fac-
ulty searches and hiring, a sub-sec-
tion titled "Broadening the Pool,"
lists a set of guidelines on how to
seek more minority candidates for an
open job position at the University.
This includes advice to keep in mind
that "some eminent universities have
only recently begun actively to pro-
duce women and minorities Ph.Ds.
Therefore, consider candidates form
a wide range of institutions."
Michael Schoenfeldt, the asso-
ciate dean of the College of Litera-
ture, Science and the Arts, said in an
e-mail interview that his college
urges departments to participate
in STRIDE when hiring new fac-
ulty.
"We tell departments that if
they come up with a strong can-
didate from the pool of under-
represented minorities, we will
do everything we can to find the
resources to hire this person," he
said.
The main focus of this report,
Evans said, are the trends of the
University's attempts to hire more
minority faculty members rather
than creating a certain target per-
centage of minority faculty that
the University should meet.
"Were not so much concerned
with where we are today, or
where we might be tomorrow.
We're concerned with the overall
trends," he said. "Irrespective of
what is happening anyplace else,
the trends we have are not good,
even within our own world, with-
out worrying about what is hap-
pening elsewhere."

I
4


INITIATIVE
From Page 1A
consider requiring all students to
have health insurance.
The University's insurance
plan costs $2,183 per year. A
decade ago, the same plan cost
only $621.
MSA Vice President Arvind
Sohoni, who chaired MSA's
Health Issues Commission last
year and supports a health care
requirement for University stu- I
dents,saidhe alsosupports adding
a health care coverage mandate to
the state's constitution.
"Itkindofcomes fromthesame
school of thinking that uninsured
people are at a big disadvantage,"
Sohonisaid. "The goalis to reduce
the cost. With more healthy peo-
ple, costs will go down."
Though he supports putting
the initiative on the ballot, Sohoni
said he was concerned that the
proposed language lacks a spe-
cific policy.
Marjorie Mitchell, a Health
Care for Michigan campaign
committee member, said the
committee wants to pressure the
Michigan Legislature to develop
a plan, she said. The state's consti-
tution, she said, isn't the place to
draft specific legislation.
"We don't have a specific plan
that we are promoting," she said.
"We are promoting a setof princi-
ples which we think makes sense
in the health care reform debate
for the people of Michigan."
The proposal doesn't specify a
time period for legislators to draft
a statewide health care plan, but if
the process took longer than two
years, Mitchell said, the commit-
tee "might need to put some more
pressure on."
Brady Smith, chair of the
University's chapter of College
Republicans, said the initiative
was unnecessary and probably
wouldn't be effective if imple-
mented. He said he was wary of
giving lawmakers a broad man-
date that doesn't guarantee that
care would be high-quality and
affordable.
"It doesn't have any real teeth
to it," Smith said. "This is bind-
ing legal language and that'd be a
nightmare for the courts to try to
enforce."
Smith said he plans to evaluate
the proposal with members of the
College Republicans before his
group takes a stance on the initia-
tive.
LSA sophomore Nathaniel Eli
Coats Styer, chair of the Universi-
ty'schapterofCollegeDemocrats,
said his organizationhasgathered
about 200 signatures for the peti-
tion at group meetings and from
students in Mason Hall.
"It's a great, positive move-
ment forward for universal in the
state of Michigan," Styer said.
"We look forward to campaign-
ing for it in November if it gets on
the ballot."

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