Attract, Retain, and Advance A Diverse Community of Faculty and Staff

Since 2018, the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion has offered implicit bias training to supervisors through HR’s Leadership Development Program and workshops to search committees, especially for departments hiring through the REIS faculty cluster hiring initiative. Work around hiring and retention of underrepresented employees will progress through the ADVANCE grant.

Academic departments that have hired faculty through the cluster hiring process since 2018, along with other faculty searches, increased the diversity of their candidate pools through equity-minded hiring plans.

All searches are now strongly encouraged by the Provost and Deans to apply the protocol and communicate with the Vice President for Inclusive Excellence, resulting in full compliance in fall 2020.

In 2020, the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion created Marquette’s Diversity Recruitment Resources for Search Committees, in collaboration with the Department of Human Resources. This resource is shared with all university search committee chairs.

The VP for Inclusive Excellence is a co-PI on the ADVANCE grant, which supports programs that utilize intersectional approaches, recognizing how gender, race, ethnicity, and other social identities interact to affect the experience of individuals in the workplace.

The ERG website has been built out as a resource that hiring committees can point applicants to for additional information. ERGs are positioned to serve as a resource for hiring as called upon by applicants and hiring committees.

In progress:
Between 2018-2020, 21 tenure track faculty members have been hired through the Race, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies (REIS) cluster hiring effort. The majority of faculty hired through this process are persons of color.

Managed by the Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, the FELOS leadership development program began in AY2017-18. To date, 74 faculty and staff have participated in the program of which more than 60 percent are women (45/74), and 23 percent (17/74) are either underrepresented minority (16 percent) or international (7 percent).

Marquette has a strong relationship with several local diverse professional organizations, such as the Hispanic Professionals of Greater Milwaukee (HPGM), and is seeking to expand its networks.

In 2021-22, the interim Vice President for Inclusive Excellence reconvened the Culture of Inclusion strategic plan group to discuss strategies for diversifying Marquette’s leadership and promoting the advancement of women and people of color.  

The Department of Human Resources is part of the Bias Incident Response Team and consults and facilitates appropriate responses to reports involving employees.

Sponsored by the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, as of 2023, there are eight active Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), including the Black Faculty and Staff Network, the Hispanic/Latinx Faculty and Staff Association, the LGBTQ Employee Resource Group, the Marquette Moms, Marquette Social Professionals, Sustainable Marquette, Womxn of Color ERG, and Women of Marquette.

No formal mentoring program for faculty of color currently exists across academic colleges. The REIS program provides informal mutual support networks.