Meeting Examines Diversity Initiative

UC Berkeley has taken a step toward determining how to increase racial and ethnic diversity on campus, addressing one of Chancellor Robert Birgeneau's initial pledges to the campus community.

At a town-hall meeting yesterday, dozens of faculty members joined campus administrators in a discussion of the hiring process for new faculty members and possible research proposals for a research initiative launched by Birgeneau last May.

Under the Berkeley Diversity Research Initiative, Birgeneau hopes to take a research-based approach to proving the value of diversity in higher education.

"I think the end goal is we want to create a research base where multicultural societies can flourish," said Alice Agogino, chair of the UC Berkeley Academic Senate and co-chair of the initiative's steering committee.

The initiative is currently soliciting proposals for new faculty members that can bring thought-provoking research into diversity issues.

The new researchers, who would be considered full-time faculty members, would not be limited to a specific department or research goal.

"We want to go for quality and we want to go for coherence," said George Breslauer, dean of social sciences and co-chair of the steering committee. "We can't anticipate one hundred percent which field the candidate will come from."

The proposed research is not limited to the UC Berkeley campus, but includes addressing statewide, nationwide and even international themes of ethnic and racial disparity.

Themes may include health care, career opportunities, environmental justice or civil rights.

The ultimate aim of the research is to propose educational and governmental policy changes, the initiative's co-chairs said.

"Part of the goal here is to have research-driven products that come out of this," Agogino said.

Some faculty members expressed doubt about the feasibility of increasing diversity among faculty members, especially in the fields of science and engineering.

"We have a real problem in creating diversity because of problems in the applicant pool and the education system in general," said Geoffrey Owen, dean of biological sciences.

Other faculty members, however, said they hope that the new diversity researchers will help foster interdisciplinary connections at UC Berkeley, in technical fields of nanoscience and information technology, for example.

Angelica Stacy, associate vice provost for faculty equity, expressed hope that this new interdisciplinary approach will partly serve to eventually reform current hiring trends that sometimes favor applicants with research specialties.

"What we rapidly recognize is that we were losing talent that were slipping beneath the cracks," said Stacy, a professor in the chemistry department.

Despite the general optimism of the committee's co-chairs, many faculty members believe that much more should be done to combat the problem of ethnic and racial disparities that exist in the community.

"It's not a large enough effort to make a big difference, but it could act as a catalyst," said Gibor Basri, professor of astronomy and chair of the Academic Senate's committee on the Status of Women and Ethnic Minorities. "There are many other things that need to happen."

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