"Developing Diverse Departments (3-D) at NC State" is designed to adopt/adapt a companion set of ADVANCE initiatives in order to address implicit biases and rarely articulated cultural stereotypes held within the university. Project goals are: (1) to increase the number of women and faculty of color in the professoriate, (2) to create a climate that promotes the success of all faculty, and (3) to eliminate factors that elevate women's and ethnic minorities' risk of leaving NCSU faculty positions. The project is organized into two arms. The first arm will increase the number of deans, center directors, and department heads who are actively and effectively creating conditions within their units that are favorable for advancing women and faculty of color. The second arm will increase the number of female and faculty of color who are emerging as academic leaders. Each arm will be linked to a core faculty group, called Advance Scholars, who have committed to becoming knowledgeable and effective change agents within college and university culture. Small and large workshops will bring together the project participants to share insights via informal and formal discussions and presentations. In overview, the project involves ever-widening circles of influence strategically designed to transfer knowledge about bias and stereotypes, through change agents, into communities of current and emerging academic leaders. 3-D at NC State thus condenses insights about the persuasiveness of respected colleagues in peer education regarding biases and stereotypes (from the University of Michigan's STRIDE program), the need to encourage change agents among faculty (from the organizing principles of the University of Washington's ADVANCE Program in the Center for Institutional Change), the importance of departmental climates in faculty satisfaction (from the University of Wisconsin-Madison WISELI's Climate Workshops for Department Chairs initiative), the value of identifying highly visible advocates for equity (from Georgia Tech's ADVANCE Professors Network initiative), and the critical importance of leadership training about diversity (from a wide selection of ADVANCE efforts across the nation). The project was developed in response to a Provost-appointed taskforce that undertook a year-long and institution-wide data collection and analysis initiative. With a projected hiring surge on the horizon, NC State is uniquely positioned to become a model for building a diverse and dynamic professoriate that is knowledgeable about, and willing to confront, biases and stereotypes in hiring, promotion, tenure, and leadership decision-making.
The intellectual merit of the project rests on the ability and expertise of the principal investigators to test the theory that a "diffusion" of information about social biases and stereotypes into the professoriate will improve five key indicators: (1) the rate of hiring of women faculty and faculty of color, (2) the percentage of faculty of color and women among the professoriate and academic leadership, (3) the disproportionate risk of junior faculty women leaving before a tenure decision, (4) the level of employment satisfaction among faculty of color, and (5) the relationship between the number of women hired and perceived quality of newly hired faculty. We have baseline data on each of these indicators.
The broader impacts of the project rest on our distillation of a model subset of initiatives from the riches of the ADVANCE effort, for application in university settings where institutional support for diversity initiatives outpaces attitudes in the faculty ranks. Changes in institutional policies and procedures are necessary but may not be sufficient to provoke a fully realized cultural shift in university culture, where faculty members play an active role in on-the-ground hiring and promotion decisions. 3-D at NC State is uniquely located, in time, place, and expertise, to examine how the lifeblood of the university, i.e. education, can spark a shift in attitudes among educators themselves, toward an inclusive and diverse academic community.
