The Chronicle of Higher Education
February 28, 2010
Innovative recruiting has helped the Rochester Institute of Technology hire more minority professors
By Audrey Williams June
Seven and a half years ago, when Robert Osgood ambled toward a Rochester Institute of Technology booth at a conference for minority doctoral students, he was not yet ready to go on the job market. But M. Renee Baker, the booth's lone occupant, was ready for him.
Mr. Osgood was still two years away from getting his Ph.D. To Ms. Baker, though, it was the perfect time to sell him on an academic career at Rochester. She whipped out her cellphone and called the chairman of the biological-sciences department to talk with Mr. Osgood on the spot. To his surprise—"I thought there was no way she would reach them," he says—Ms. Baker handed him the phone so he could chat. That phone call was the start of a long-running relationship between Mr. Osgood and Rochester that led to his accepting a job there in 2008 as an assistant professor of medical sciences.
"You have to act like a talent scout all the time," says Ms. Baker, executive director of the office of faculty recruitment and retention at Rochester. "If we stay in touch with them the longest, hopefully we'll be the ones to win out in the end."
For Ms. Baker, that kind of aggressive outreach is key to faculty recruiting—particularly when it comes to diversifying the ranks. On-the-road recruiting is just one part of a multipronged effort to attract African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans to a campus that specializes in fields, like science and engineering, from which those groups are largely missing. And with its recent efforts, Rochester has had measurable success.
Full Story: http://chronicle.com/article/A-Drive-to-Diversify-the-Fa/64384/ (Subscription)
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