For the purposes of establishing aggregate statistics on the demographics of our faculty search activities, the ADAA office will request a summary of demographics of their Faculty Candidate Pool prior to approving a department “short list” of candidates. Faculty candidate pool procedures are accessible through this link.
Staff who work in support of the faculty searches are asked to collect information on the race/ethnicity and gender of an applicant via the candidate’s CV, letters of reference, or a web search. We also ask that if the surname of the candidate has a high probability of association with a particular gender, you use that as sufficient evidence to assign a gender. We understand that this data may not be 100% accurate, but for the purposes of establishing aggregate information on the applicant pool, a small amount of error is acceptable.
When filling out the initial spreadsheet, please note that all applicants who are credible engineering faculty applicants who may or may not be in the specific search area would be listed. In the appropriate column, please also indicate those applicants that have been invited to interview.
Both the collection and handling of this data falls under federal legal requirements. We therefore ask that the following guidelines be followed:
- Staff involved in this activity should not consult with a faculty member. If, through a conversation this information is revealed voluntarily, this is fine, but faculty should not be sought out for their input.
- This information is confidential and should never be shared with faculty in the department. The data should only be collected and recorded by staff in support of the search process and should be maintained throughout the process in a secure location.
- At the close of the search, the data should be permanently destroyed. Any data supplied to the ADAA office is analyzed for aggregate statistics and the original data is permanently destroyed.
This pool data is supplied by the ADAA office to the ADVANCE office for a detailed analysis of the pool at a variety of junctures (available applicants on a national level, actual viable applicants, seriously considered applicants and invited applicants). This analysis assists us in revealing the presence of potential bias in the search process and in analyzing our effectiveness in attracting applicants in a measure comparable to the production of our peer institutions.