Action Plan for Faculty at Brooklyn College
October 13, 2020
Dear Brooklyn College colleagues,
We are pleased to announce more progress from the Implementation Team for Racial Justice. On September 30, 2020, we hosted two listening sessions focused on racial justice for faculty. These were the final of six listening sessions over the past three weeks focused on staff, students, and faculty. We also received many suggestions on how better to support faculty from a number of groups on campus, and we consulted with the Provost and Vice President for Institutional Advancement.
The Implementation Team recognized the synergies between the interests expressed at the student and faculty sessions on the diversification of both the faculty and curriculum. Faculty noted the lack of diversity in STEM disciplines and the need for additional diverse hires across many departments. Faculty expressed concern about retaliation when there is conflict with peers. They expressed concern about the disproportionate burden of student mentorship often carried by diverse faculty, and how this service was counted in the tenure and promotion process. We recommend the following action plan in response:
1. Faculty Diversity
Since the College does not yet have a budget for the year, it is not in a position to launch a faculty hiring process. Nevertheless, the Implementation Team for Racial Justice urges the President’s cabinet to develop new ways to enhance fulltime and tenure track faculty diversity. The Team also urges the College to prepare for faculty hiring once it is able to do so. From our Institutional Research department, it requests demographic data of faculty by department, as well as metrics related to faculty-student ratios, courses, and majors to understand our faculty hiring needs.
2. Curriculum Diversity
Last week, we noted that each academic department is required to have a student representative on its curriculum committee and urged Chairs to ensure there are diverse student representatives on their departmental curriculum committees. We also recommended enhancements to ensure diverse student representation on Faculty Council committees. Today, the Implementation Team further recommends that each School develop a list of courses within its departments that relate to diversity issues and to discuss diversity of the curriculum with the School Student Advisory Council, which, last week, we recommended all Schools create.
3. Faculty Service in Promotion and Tenure
The Implementation Team recommends that the College appoint a committee of interested faculty, chaired by Prof. Sophia Suarez, to review best practices and recommend ways to measure and count faculty service and student mentorship in the promotion and tenure process.
4. Faculty Mentor
The Implementation Team recommends that the College select a Faculty Mentor to support junior faculty as they prepare for promotion and tenure and that it provide appropriate course release to the Faculty Mentor. The Faculty Mentor will help guide junior faculty members, particularly diverse junior faculty members, to achieve excellence in research, teaching, and service as they prepare for promotion and tenure.
5. Faculty Complaints against Faculty
Complaints against a faculty peer on the basis of membership in a protected class go to the Office of Diversity and Equity. All other complaints about a faculty peer go to the Dean of the School. The Implementation Team recommends that the administration review this process with CAP and Faculty Council, and underscore the prohibition on retaliation.
6. Faculty Support Fund
The Implementation Team recommends that the College fundraise specifically to support faculty working to enhance diversity at the College. The College needs a flexible funding source to support a number of faculty initiatives that support diversity including, for example, new programming, curricular development, research, release time for outstanding service, outside facilitation for training, and faculty start-up packages.
We are pleased with this progress and eager to continue the work. The Implementation Team would like to thank all the individuals and campus groups who participated in the Listening Sessions or made independent recommendations. Please keep the suggestions and ideas coming by emailing us at ITRJ@brooklyn.cuny.edu or using our anonymous Community Feedback Form.
We will now work on other areas of the College’s Anti-Racist Agenda as well as implement the action plans we have already recommended to the College. We hope to update the campus community with additional action items in a few weeks.
Sincerely,
Anthony Brown, Ron Jackson, and James Lynch, on behalf of the Implementation Team for Racial Justice