The University of Cincinnati has announced a $40 million commitment to diversify its faculty. The initiative includes a cluster hiring program where a group of scholars in a particular field are hired to boost the university’s academic standing in that discipline. Another facet of the faculty diversity plan is an effort to find jobs for the spouses of potential faculty hires.
The Strategic Hiring Opportunity Program actually began in 2013 and to date 26 faculty members from underrepresented minority groups have been hired. Recently, the provost’s office allocated a new $4 million fund to hire a cluster of faculty members in urban studies. Funds will be provided for each of the six new faculty members in this cluster for a graduate fellow and an undergraduate research assistant.
A group called Black UC recently held a rally on the University of Cincinnati. The group said that efforts to diversify the faculty have gone too slow. The group stated that there were 75 Blacks out of a total of 2,800 faculty members on campus.
