Many colleges and universities now require faculty search committees to use rubrics when evaluating faculty job candidates, as proponents believe these "decision-support tools" can reduce the impact of bias in candidate evaluation. That is, rubrics are intended to ensure that candidates are evaluated more fairly, which is then thought to…

As the face of higher education has changed, the need for a more diverse workforce has increased. It is aspirational and essential for students of color to see themselves reflected in the faces of their faculty and staff. Campus diversity enriches the educational experience for all faculty, staff, and students. Unfortunately, the rate of hiring…

Bias among faculty search committees has been considered a significant barrier to diversifying the professoriate. Given the traditional faculty hierarchy in academia, junior faculty search chairs may not have the positional power to challenge authority when confronted with bias or prejudice. Yet, search chairs are expected to ensure equitable…

Background: The lack of racial diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines is perhaps one of the most challenging issues in the United States higher education system. The issue is not only concerning diverse students, but also diverse faculty members. One important contributing factor is the faculty hiring…

Various concerns regarding the vitality and racial/ethnic composition of the academic profession have prompted new study of faculty search committees and hiring paradigms, most notably examining the term "fit" in candidate appraisals. Yet no study utilizes a candidate evaluation framework to investigate whether or not faculty members…

Student ratings of instruction (SRI) are commonly used to evaluate courses and teaching in higher education. Much debate about their validity in evaluating teaching exists, which is due to concerns of bias by factors unrelated to teaching quality (Spooren et al., 2013). Our objective was to identify peer-reviewed original research published in…

Citing a pattern of outside interest groups aggressively seeking to impose their influence on recent collegiate hiring and tenure decisions, five prominent professors have formed the Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University. They are circulating an online petition that takes explicit aim at "groups portraying themselves as defenders of Israel,"…

Last year, Franci, a very knowledgeable Lakota scholar and writer, arrived to teach at this author's university. The author's friend, Malea, had left, so she was pleased to see another American Indian face in the department. The past year it had become clear that Indians faced many hardships at the university, but most strikingly they continued to…