The Office of the Provost and the Office of Diversity and Equity Programs of Mississippi State University recently hosted a campus workshop for about 50 campus administrators, in order to highlight the importance of diversity in hiring and suggest ideas for diversifying hiring practices in the future.
Tommy Stevenson, the newly-appointed director of the Office of Diversity and Equity Programs, said the workshop, hosted by Rochester Institute of Technology manager of faculty recruitment Renee Baker, gave administrators information on the best practices in recruiting female faculty and faculty of color.
This workshop was one step in a process of achieving an important goal, and there will be similar workshops in the future, Stevenson said.
Faculty, staff, deans and department heads comprised part of the group that attended the workshop. Stevenson said these individuals play an important role in the hiring process at MSU.
“Across the country, this (diversity in hiring) is an issue of concern,” he said. Tools are being put in place to help realize the president’s and provost’s hiring goals, he said.
“This office is here to aid and assist the president and the provost in achieving those goals,” Stevenson said.
He said MSU strives for excellence in all areas, including diversity.
Jerry Gilbert, provost, said there were several important takeaways from the workshop. One was in order to be effective in recruiting, a university must make a proactive effort to create a strong and diverse pool of candidates from which to choose.
Gilbert also said Baker suggested how to phrase ads announcing job openings at MSU in a way that would make the university and Starkville attractive to a wide body of potential applicants.
Gilbert said MSU should be presented as a community where all people are welcomed and can experience career growth and will hopefully want to stay for their entire career.
“I think as we grow as a university it will be easier for us to think of ourselves as a long-term home for our faculty,” he said.
Gilbert said the percentage of female faculty should be increased to 50 percent, and the percentage of African-American faculty should be raised to somewhere around 20 percent through intermediate goals.
“A lot of people have noted we are still fighting the image of our state,” Gilbert said of the stereotypes Mississippi faces.
He said MSU could be more proactive in hiring a diverse faculty body, and at some point in the future, campus leaders will be meeting with African-American faculty to discuss hiring ideas and garner feedback.
“I think all of our department heads know diversity is a good thing, but there are different levels of commitment,” Gilbert said.
International student Rajarshi Banerjee, freshman computer science major from India, said his experience at MSU has been very good, and he has made friends from other cultures who speak other languages.
Banerjee also said MSU has been academically impressive, too.
“Academically it is very good. The faculty [is] excellent and more than happy to help people who are interested,” he said.
He said he has met faculty and graduate students from Europe, Latin America and the Middle East among other regions and said overall the MSU community is a diverse one. Banerjee said, in the future MSU should look to incorporate even more faculty from across the globe.
“I would say that MSU should expand its borders to Europe and Africa (in introducing students and faculty),” he said.