While the ethnic diversity of faculty has been limited systemwide, the makeup of professors at UCSD is even less varied, according to numbers released by the University of California Office of the President.
Anthropology professor David Jordan is one of many faculty members that are white, the dominant ethnicity of professors in the UC system.
The figures were coupled with recommendations from a task force commissioned by UC President Robert C. Dynes last fall to investigate ways to improve diversity in faculty ranks. The group — composed of professors and administrators from all UC campuses — described its goal as vital to improving campus life.
At UCSD, full-time faculty have been mostly white for the past decade. In 2005, almost 80 percent of full-time professors were white. While the levels of ethnic-minority professors have consistently jumped each year for those years, the task force still described the situation as critical.
The figures are not much better systemwide, where almost 79 percent of full-time faculty is white.
Task force members are also preparing to overhaul faculty hiring practices, because “the next decade of increased faculty retirements presents a one-time opportunity of higher faculty turnover.”
Minority faculty were hired at a rate of almost 10 percent of applicants during the 1990s, the task force found, but the level dropped significantly with the passage of Proposition 209, which barred the use of race as a factor in hiring practices. Since 2000, however, the university has returned to previous levels of minority faculty employment, though officials did not offer reasons why.
UCSD is aiming to diversify the ethnicity and gender makeup of its faculty, according to Academic Senate Chair Jean-Benard Minster.
At the same time, improvements will be complicated, he said.
“It is clearly a challenge to turn a multi-generational process around,” he said. “[T]he proof in the pudding will take a few years to materialize.”
Using raw figures to evaluate UCSD’s faculty diversity ignores the “awareness” of committees that are trying to solve the problem, Minster said.
