Element 4B: Experiences Working with Diverse Faculty
The faculty represents a broad range of ethnicities and expertise.  Formal measures are taken to ensure that faculty recruitment, hiring, and retention policies and procedures reflect an emphasis on diversity.  The Adelphi University Guidelines for Recruiting, Hiring and Retaining of Diverse Faculty (offered as Exhibit S4-6) indicates that faculty searches are advertised in a wide variety of print and electronic media as well as at a wide range of conferences. Faculty search committees are designed to include faculty who represent a mix of experiences and backgrounds.  The position descriptions are carefully composed to ensure that there is no bias against race, color, creed, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, age, sex, disability, Vietnam-era or disabled veteran status and all faculty search committee members are expected to be familiar with questions that can and cannot be legally asked of interviewees.

Further, each school is required to track the resumes they receive with regard to source, ethnicity, gender, and other demographic variables of all applicants. Once the search has two or three finalists, the Dean is asked to review the candidate base to determine if the recruiting sources were utilized to reach a diverse audience. If the Dean is not satisfied with the search components, then the search committee is asked to seek more candidates. The Provost also reviews the search in a similar manner. In addition, the Affirmative Action Plan tracks our results as a whole on Adelphi's faculty recruitment.  This document is provided as Exhibit S4-7.

The unit's full-time faculty represents approximately 21% of Adelphi's total faculty.   Table 4-3 summarizes the ethnicity of the faculty across the schools and colleges at the University. As the table below indicates, within the Education programs, the faculty diversity varies. In 2005, the Curriculum and Instruction Department (which included the three current departments listed below) employed 27% non-White faculty—proportionally among the highest percentages in the University.  The current (2006) Childhood Education program has a faculty that is over 50% non-White—the highest percentage of any unit listed in Table 4-3.

A Spring 2004 survey of the 51 full-time and 140 part-time faculty members in the unit examined their expertise and perspectives on diversity.   Table 4-4 summarizes the questions given on the survey. 

Findings indicate that many of our faculty live or have lived in diverse neighborhoods or abroad, and a number are fluent in languages other than English (Spanish, Russian) which informs their work with student teachers and with cooperating schools.  Several faculty work and/or have worked in diverse school districts and many are conversant in more than one language.  Among the languages mentioned are: Dutch, Swahili, Tamil, French, Russian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and Zulu.  In addition, numerous faculty have lived or worked in at least 30 foreign countries. 

The range of experience has had a significant impact on the views of the faculty about qualifications for teaching on diverse issues. The common sentiment expressed was that an individual's self-awareness of his/her approach to diversity, coupled with a commitment to connecting practice with ideals, qualifies him/her to teach about diversity issues.  Even though there is no University-wide formal training for new faculty on diversity, the survey also revealed 11 full-time School of Education faculty (in four departments) have participated in diversity trainings in the past and are willing to conduct such trainings in the future.  Faculty also have the opportunity to participate in diversity issues by serving on a number of university-wide committees that go beyond the Diversity Advisory Committee and Diversity Task Force. These include the International Initiatives Committee, a campus-wide group of faculty, administrators and students, charged with infusing courses and campus events with internationalized content.  As a Non-Governmental Organization of the Department of Public Information of the United Nations, Adelphi has a commitment to disseminate information and raise public awareness about the purposes and activities of the United Nations and issues of global concern.  As a result, the International Initiatives Committee organizes the annual Ambassadors' Speakers Series.

The unit faculty are committed to candidates working with diverse P-12 faculty as well.  Exhibit S4-8 provides the percentages of faculty in the 61 cooperating school districts (New York City figures unavailable) who are reported to be non-White, based on figures reported by the New York State Education Department (2004).  The percentages range from 0 to 77 percent with the range for the districts in the Model Program ranging up to 24 percent.