Unprecedented Number of Female Faculty Hired

University of Texas at Austin
News Release
August 12, 2009

AUSTIN, Texas — About half of the 49 professors who will be joining the College of Liberal Arts faculty in 2009-2010 are female. That includes an unprecedented five women coming in as full professors from such schools as Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Southern California.
The hires come less than a year after an internal University of Texas at Austin report identified potential strategies for eliminating gender inequity on the faculty. They represent one of the university's biggest successes to date in closing the gender gap.
The new professors' arrival also highlights the College of Liberal Arts' ability to attract top scholars who are already tenured at nationally ranked schools.
"The professors joining the Liberal Arts faculty are among the most accomplished and respected scholars in their fields," said Randy L. Diehl, dean of the College of Liberal Arts. "They will conduct cutting-edge research in such disciplines as linguistics, history, anthropology, psychology and Middle Eastern studies and will work directly with graduate students and undergraduates."
Among the incoming faculty members are Jo Ann Hackett, former director of graduate studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard, and her husband John Huehnergard, a former chair of that department.
"Everybody knows about the University of Texas and the quality of the languages and linguistics programs and we've always known this was a marvelous place," said Hackett, a Semitic language and Hebrew Bible scholar who will teach in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies. "We were in Austin for two days visiting and we left and we said, 'we've got to do this."

Full News Release: http://www.utexas.edu/news/2009/08/12/female_faculty_hires/