College of Arts & Letters Diversity

The College of Arts & Letters is the largest and most diverse college at the University. We continue to be committed to enhancing faculty diversity and inclusiveness, particularly by making faculty hires that more proportionately reflect the composition of the College's student body. The members of the College believe that a diverse and inclusive environment is essential for sustaining high quality academic programs and learning experiences.

The faculty and staff of the College of Arts and Letters recognize the existence and long-term impact of institutional racism, settler colonialism, and rigid systems of inequity in our past and present. Educational institutions must work to eradicate the consequences of these structures, in part by developing critical analytical approaches that reveal how the long shadows of discrimination and dispossession have shaped our world.

Departments are encouraged to recruit and retain BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) scholars, especially by engaging in best practices when conducting searches. The College Faculty Development and Diversity Task Force surveys departments about search committee efforts to enhance the diversity of their pool of applicants and works to provide training aids on hiring practices. The Dean also encourages faculty to serve as key diversity advocates and facilitators in their respective departments as well as in the College.

The College of Arts & Letters supports the "Academic Affairs Six Point Plan to a More Inclusive Environment." We support the Office of Faculty Diversity and Retention and the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity in their efforts to improve hiring practices. As the plan outlines, "a focus on multicultural competence and racial and social justice" is to be part of curriculum development in departments. The College will also "utilize evidence-based data to drive faculty diversity recruitment and retention initiatives."

We believe that when diversity is embraced, it promotes the construction of more just and equitable communities that foster the realization of our better selves. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."