Over the past few weeks students, faculty and staff have asked about our commitment to diversifying the Tufts community. We believe our actions underscore our commitment and would like to bring everyone up to date on our initiatives.
The 1997 Task Force on Race Report recommended 47 diversity initiatives for Arts, Sciences & Engineering, one of which was to establish the Office of Diversity Education and Development (ODED). That office, the University's Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action and many other offices, departments, and programs in Arts, Sciences & Engineering have been very helpful to us in implementing successfully the other recommendations. You will find the most updated information at ase.tufts.edu/diversity/panel/year2001/contents.html.
An Oversight Panel of the Task Force on Race has met for the past three years to track and assess the progress of the diversity initiatives. We can now report that close to 95 percent of the recommendations have been completed or initiated. In addition, we wanted to let you know that President Larry Bacow and the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action are planning a diversity workshop for the Academic Council (the members of the University's senior leadership). It is our hope that this workshop could be replicated at the level of the individual schools.
We are in the process of hiring an independent consultant to research the issue of faculty retention at Tufts. A first step will be to interview all tenure-track and tenured faculty hired from 1991 to 1996, regardless of their race/ethnicity, gender, or whether they are still at Tufts. Following the interviews, the firm will look at what attracts faculty to Tufts, gather perceptions of Tufts' institutional culture, and identify the perceived "profile of a successful Tufts professor."
The firm also will identify any barriers that may affect the cultivation of successful faculty. This firm will then help us implement long-term initiatives such as exit interviews to learn more about why people leave Tufts and steps to help us retain our excellent faculty. We anticipate that this work will build on the recommendations we received in Spring 2001 from the Ad Hoc Committee on Faculty Retention.
Forty-seven percent of our full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty hires from 1995-2002 have been persons of color. Black, non-Hispanics represent 21.7 percent; Asian or Pacific Islanders represent 16.9 percent, and Hispanics represent 8.4 percent. Our ability to continue to attract and retain outstanding faculty and administrators of color is key to our progress in achieving the level of diversity we're seeking.
We have almost doubled our African-American student body in the last six years, from 3.9 percent in 1995-1996 to 7.5 percent this year. Our Hispanic student body has increased as well, from 4.8 percent in 1995-1996 to 8.3 percent this year.
We established the Diversity Fund for Arts, Sciences & Engineering to cover costs of a wide variety of initiatives, including programmatic changes and events. The fund's advisory committee of students, faculty and staff makes recommendations to us about this funding.
From this fund we plan to spend $500,000 next year - four times our initial 1999 annual funding. Some of this year's 40 recipients are: two Curriculum Transformation Projects-in Asian American Studies and in Latino Studies; Anthropology's "Remembering the 'Other': The Royall House Slave Quarters Exhibit;" the Safe Colleges Conference; Career Services' Summer Internship Sponsorship Program; the School of Engineering for a pilot visiting faculty program; and appearances on campus by the hip-hop theatre ensemble Universes, Rita Moreno, and the comedy troupe Stir Friday Night!, among many others.
In fact, during the week of March 4 to 8, the Diversity Fund is sponsoring appearances by Grace Poore, Ron Takaki, Evelynn Hammonds, Carmelita Tropicana and the play "Gate of Heaven," directed by Sudipto Chatterjee.
While we believe we've made great progress there, is much more to be done. We are committed to continuing to implement steps already taken, and to developing new ones. We look forward to working with the entire community to make Tufts the healthy, diverse community we want it to be.
Susan Ernst is the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts. Ioannis Miaoulis is the Dean of the School of Engineering and Associate Provost at Tufts.
