USC Racial Equity in Faculty Hiring Institute

The USC Racial Equity in Faculty Hiring Institute is designed for Deans, Department Chairs, HR staff, and other hiring committee members to:

• Recognize and interpret hiring data to understand the state of racial equity in employment and hiring on campus and understand the imperative for diverse and equity-minded employees;
• Lead race-conscious and equity-minded discussions around how hiring committees define merit and fit, and how those definitions can lead to equitable or inequitable outcomes in hiring by race and ethnicity;
• Use inquiry protocols to examine institutional artifacts of practice (like job announcements, interview questions, screening criteria, and rubrics) and how they act to support or undermine racial equity in the hiring process.
• Use inquiry findings to inform changes in hiring artifacts and practices that will bring about racial equity in hiring.

This module introduces foundational concepts and terms about race and racial equity in higher education. We will set ground rules and community standards to lay the foundation for the rest of the Institute. Participants will engage in identity exploration, mapping identity and power, and critical self-reflection.

This module will define racial equity in the context of hiring and focus on discussing and interpreting institutional employment and hiring data from a race-conscious, equity-minded lens.

This module will help participants identify the implicit and institutional biases that exist throughout current faculty hiring practices and how traditional conceptions of merit and fit lead to inequitable racial patterns.

Participants will look at screening criteria, interview questions, and rubrics with inquiry tools designed to prompt critical reflection of whether these artifacts of hiring practice serve racial equity in its language and conceptions of merit and fit.

This module will make explicit common ideological discourses that hinder equitable changes to faculty  hiring practices and strategies to disrupt them.

Participants will identify the impact of policies and practices on racially minoritized faculty and support action planning to address the influence of organizational culture on the experiences and retention of racially minoritized faculty.

The cost of the USC Racial Equity in Faculty Hiring Institute for the 2024-2025 year can range from $40,000 – $60,000 for up to 30 participants.  Individuals can also register for our open enrollment institute for $1,750 for 4 pre-set modules or $499 for one module.