I am pleased to provide an update on our progress toward our departmental goal of addressing systemic under-representation of Black and Indigenous faculty and learners in academia that I defined last August in my statement on racism.
As we look to hire several new tenure-track and teaching-stream faculty in 2021 and 2022, our EDI Committee has made faculty recruitment guidelines a priority. The Committee has worked hard to familiarize themselves with institutional policy, observe Physiology’s current practices, research wise practices around job posting, advertising, and interviewing procedures, and has provided a comprehensive set of recommendations that will inform our faculty hiring practices going forward. As a result:
We invited Suzanne Charles Watson, a highly skilled Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Specialist to lead a training session for one of our current Search Committees. Suzanne also lead a longer session with all of our primary faculty to ensure we all have the actionable skills and tools to foster an inclusive, supportive departmental culture. One of the most important takeaways from Suzanne’s training sessions is that no scientific department can be truly excellent if it is not diverse, if there are voices missing from the conversation. True excellence is, of course, what we strive for in the Department of Physiology.
In addition to providing EDI training to all Search Committees going forward, we have set a goal for our faculty to better reflect the diversity of Toronto (one of the most multicultural cities in the world) moving forward, using census data to guide us.
We have updated the language in our job postings to highlight our commitment to inclusion and diversity and will be advertising more widely, including posting our ads in publications and at organizations for Black and Indigenous scientists.
While we were already following the practices laid out in the Strategies for Recruiting an Excellent & Diverse Faculty Complement provided by the Office of the Vice-Provost, we have set minimum standards for diversity in the applicant pool. More emphasis will also be placed on defining clear criteria for excellence from the posting onward and adhering to those throughout the search to ensure unconscious bias is mitigated as much as possible.
We are embarking on a project to forge new partnerships with centres and organizations who are training young scientists from underrepresented communities to create a pipeline of diverse and highly qualified applicants for new faculty positions.
As Chair, I continue to educate myself on an ongoing basis and take the recommendations of our EDI Committee very seriously. A representative of the Committee will be appointed as an observer on all Faculty Search Committees to oversee our deliberations and remind us of best practices in recruiting.
Of course Faculty Hiring is only one component of building a diverse, inclusive, and actively anti-racist departmental culture, and much work remains to be done. The EDI Committee is currently gathering data on the experiences of our graduate students and will define next action steps accordingly. We will continue to report on our plans as they are defined and implemented.
As always, I welcome any questions and feedback via email. Please enjoy the rest of the summer as we look forward to an exciting start to the Fall Term.
