There is preliminary approval in the administration to create a new office to tackle concerns regarding Tufts' low retention of faculty of color. After years of wide-spread administrative efforts, which began with the report of the Task Force on Race in 1997, the "Faculty Retention and Departure Interview Program" proposed by the Pan-African Alliance (PAA) would add to the already numerous list of University offices, centers, and committees that all work to address racial and ethnic trouble areas on campus.
Despite the efforts of these various groups, the PAA feels that there needs to be more specific energy devoted to the issue of faculty retention, as eight black faculty resigned during the last year.
"The worst aspect of the trend [of departing faculty] comes in the fact that there is no official record regarding the reasons why outstanding black faculty are leaving," the PAA said in its proposal to Mel Bernstein, Vice President of Arts, Sciences and Engineering (AS&E).
The office has already been okayed by the Diversity Funding Advisory Committee (DFAC), and if Bernstein approves the proposal, it would join AS&E Diversity Education and Development office, the Office of Equal Opportunity and the Equal Education Opportunity Committee (EEOC), the six culture centers, DFAC, the Affirmative Actions Office for AS&E, and the Students of Color Outreach Program on the lengthy list of campus groups that focus on different aspects of diversity.
With so many committees and offices concentrating on race issues, questions arise as to whether there is overlap between the groups, and if there is a necessity for all of them. Chair of the Oversight Panel for Task Force on Race Francie Chew said that, while there can be some overlap of roles and jurisdictions, each committee or office serves a distinct role.
The proposers feel that the office is a worthwhile investment, despite the possibility that it would cost more money and take up additional resources from which other committees might benefit.
"Initiatives have been taken by the EEOC and the Office of Diversity to implement stages of curriculum transformation that will give the Tufts community a more diverse classroom experience. One should recognize however that any such attempts to diversify the curriculum are ineffective unless they prioritize the recruitment and hiring of faculty of color," the proposal said.
The program would seek to rectify problems with faculty retention by implementing an interview committee and a research office. The committee would talk with departing or recently departed professors to find out specific reasons why they leave, and that information would be catalogued. Committee members would analyze the interviews and look for trends among faculty members in order to discover ways to ameliorate the retention difficulties. The office component of the program would research practices other universities use to retain faculty of color.
Immediate funding for this effort would come from a special University fund that Bernstein earmarked for "diversity-related efforts." The PAA also recommended that two part-time employees be hired to work in the office.
However, some fear the general over-proliferation of campus groups focusing solely on race could strain more than just money. Many of these committees do overlap in terms of available campus resources. "They cost primarily in terms of time. It's student time that's invested, it's faculty time that's invested," Chew said. "One could ask, how much overlap there is in the membership of those committees."
Chew said that there are many different paid professionals and interested faculty members who comprise the committees, but that the students who sit on her committee are the same students involved with the other groups.
"I don't know how broad the student involvement there is. I don't know what that means, maybe it means that students feel so stretched that they can't participate. And if that's so, then it's an issue," she said.
The demand for students is wide-spread, as almost every committee is composed of students and faculty members. Although the six culture centers each have directors, they are mainly student-run. The Tufts Community Union Senate also has several committees that focus on race and diversity issues on campus, which are comprised solely of students.
In many cases, the same students serve on all the different committees and boards, which not only cuts down on the diversity of perspectives being shared, but also places significant pressure on these individuals. The PAA acknowledged this crunch, and made a plea to attract new students. "Special priority will be made to recruit 'fresh' committee members who are not already bogged down with service on other committees," the proposal said.
The committees say that all their members have plenty to do, squelching any doubts that there are too many committees for too little work.
"There is some duplication, but there is not as much as you might imagine. I think that's partly because there are many, many issues that need to be addressed on many levels," Chew said. "We could probably accomplish the work with a smaller number of groups. Either they would have to have more people on it, or every person on those groups would have to work a lot harder."
Chair of the EEOC Elizabeth Ammons echoed Chew's sentiments that each committee has an important and distinct role to play. "There's a tremendous amount of work to be done in terms of race.... We're especially concerned in the ways in which the education is inclusive in terms of race and gender and sexual orientation," she said.
