Include interdisciplinarity: People working on perspectives of and works in the tradition of underrepresented groups or in other areas of marginalized academia, such as Indigenous studies, disability studies or critical race theory often find themselves working in interdisciplinary contexts. This results in a kind of triple jeopardy as interdisciplinary work is (i) notoriously more time-consuming than disciplinary work, (ii) requires engaging with scholars and individuals outside one’s discipline including presenting work at non-discipline conferences, (iii) results in articles that are not (currently) likely to be published in top-tier journals.
Deans, Chairs, and mentors should be aware of the risks that their junior colleagues are negotiating and offer them support and pragmatic advice about how to do their work in such a way as to be intelligible to the relevant decision makers.
Chairs and promotion and tenure committees should be alive to this triple jeopardy and read their junior colleagues’ files in this light. They should seek external letters of support from people in their junior colleague’s area who are best able to judge the quality of the relevant interdisciplinary venues.
Support (at least, do not penalize) good faith efforts to create more inclusive classes: As noted in the section above, On Failure, the challenges of learning and teaching new and unfamiliar material and sensitively navigating the complexities of a more inclusive curriculum can be perilous and thankless. Efforts to modernize curricula can backfire on professors sometimes in totally unanticipated and fairly catastrophic ways. Because of the importance of the early years in the professoriate for developing one’s own teaching style, it is particularly important that new professors feel free to explore ways of making their courses more inclusive. It is thus important to assure junior colleagues that such failures, when the result of good faith efforts following good equity practices in our university, will not be held against them but will instead be lauded as classroom innovations when it comes to their tenure and promotion assessment.
Adequately recognize “service work” by members of underrepresented groups to their communities: For some communities, particularly those who are the most underrepresented in disciplines at TRU, such as Indigenous scholars and instructors, having one of their members in the professoriate, is deeply significant. As such, these faculty members may be particularly powerful symbols to the members of this group (and prospective students) that they too belong in academia. These faculty members may also get multiple requests to serve their communities in ways that are not typically valued by the profession, for instance speaking at community events or serving as a community representative. Chairs and promotion and tenure committees are strongly encouraged to think of this work as a type of applied academic work and find creative ways consistent with the collective agreement to treat it as a type of research or knowledge translation in their assessments of their colleagues and not ‘mere service.’ This point can be extended to service work for equity efforts.
Take into consideration special circumstances that may have affected candidates’ teaching, scholarship or service. Relevant circumstances might include, but are not limited to, administrative responsibilities, maternity/parental leave, child-rearing, dependent care, illness, disability, cultural or community responsibilities, socio-economic context, health-related family responsibilities or pandemic.
Follow The CRC Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: A Best Practices Guide for Retention:
- Ensure EDI guidelines for faculty evaluation and promotion are established and reviewed by groups responsible for EDI oversight at the institution.
- Ensure a stream lined self-identification process
- Use encompassing, clear, flexible criteria for assessing excellence
- Require demonstrated commitment to EDI in teaching and research documents or, as a part of the job criteria, a track record related to EDI by encouraging applicants to identify their strengths and experiences in increasing EDI in their previous institutional environment, and in curriculum, and in supporting diverse students. (ex. knowledge of inclusive pedagogical practices, commitment to equity education, experience mentoring a diverse group of students).
- Work-related assessment criteria should also apply to comparable experience in non-academic fields (e.g., government or community-based research).
- Do not focus solely on a strong publication record, as many academics have strong research output in oral or community-based forums and have considerable community service (this is especially true of some Indigenous scholars who may be doing research based in Indigenous ways of knowing).
- Develop an equity statement that is meaningful and applies a wide lens in defining diversity. Avoid using very general statements that the institution or program support equity or support applications from underrepresented members. Apply language that is consistent with the principles of EDI.
- Ensure that career interruptions due to parental leave, family care, extended illness, or community responsibilities do not negatively impact the assessment of a candidate’s research teaching or service productivity. It is important that applicants know these will be taken into consideration when candidates are assessed.