Equity-Minded Leadership Series

Enhancing Equity in Faculty Life from Hiring to Evaluation

Sustaining and supporting a diverse faculty is mission-critical for institutions of higher education. This 5-part workshop series is designed to equip you with research, strategies, and confidence to address and remedy inequities in faculty life. 

Participants will explore strategies to enhance equity in faculty hiring, workload, and evaluation through readings, peer-reviewed research, expert-led discussions, group activities, and action planning. Grounded in concepts of equity-mindedness, the series aims to equip leaders with the skills needed to support diverse faculty, promote inclusivity, and foster a thriving academic environment.

Location:

Dates & TIMES:

N/A (registration closed)

program fees:¹


¹ HERS is a nonprofit organization. The Program Fee helps defray our technology and program facilitator expenses, as well as various administrative costs. Please review
our GuideStar profile for further information about our financials and nonprofit status.

*The team rate applies only to a group of 4 or 5 people who are all employed at the same institution. Follow the prompts on the registration form to register as a team.

Please consult our virtual workshop and virtual program series cancellation and refund policy. 

Empowering academic leaders to support a diverse faculty, promote inclusivity, and foster a thriving academic environment.

[The workshops] increased confidence in navigating the process of enhancing equity in faculty workload and got [campus leaders] excited about possibilities.



- PROGRAM Info -

As we consider the current challenges institutions of higher education are grappling with, the ongoing obstacles to creating inclusive, diverse, and equitable campus communities are at the top the list. One of the largest factions of many campus communities is the faculty, and sustaining and supporting a diverse faculty is critical to the success of higher education. Additionally, many academic systems and structures that govern faculty life also impact the larger mission of the institution. For example, the ways faculty work is taken up, distributed, and assigned can determine what gets done at an institution and directly impact faculty retention. Faculty reward systems, like tenure, promotion, and evaluation, tell faculty members what kind of work is valued, and can also dictate the direction of an institution. Hiring, workload, and evaluation processes are often experienced differently by faculty of color and women, perpetuating inequities in academia.

 

Transformational leadership practices are needed to stabilize our institutions and provide an ethic of care for our students and colleagues, including faculty members who play a significant role in student experience and the overall functioning of higher education institutions. Additionally, we must attend to the structures that either maintain or mitigate existing inequities at an institution and potentially run counter to the intended mission. Understanding how to enhance equity at different stages in faculty life can have implications for equity in higher education more broadly. This series emphasizes leadership strategies rooted in Estela Bensimon’s concepts of equity-mindedness that will help to answer these challenges and ensure that our institutions not only survive — but thrive.

Using readings, peer-reviewed research, expert-led discussions, group discussion, and action planning, this virtual five-session workshop series will provide participants with knowledge and skill-building intended to enhance their ability to be the equity-minded leaders our institutions need. This series will offer participants a highly engaging, fast-paced opportunity to learn, share, reflect, and practice skills for equity-minded leadership. Enhancing equity in faculty hiring, workload, and evaluation is possible through intentional leadership.

 

Read below for detailed descriptions of the program sessions including learning outcomes and facilitators.

Session 1: Series Introduction and Embedding Equity in Faculty Hiring

In this session, we will discuss the current landscape of faculty diversity and examine inequities and biases present at different stages of faculty hiring processes. With guidance from facilitator Dr. Damani White-Lewis, participants will take an in-depth look at research examining ways to mitigate such biases and enhance equity in faculty hiring, including perceptions of fit, risk, and rubrics.

Participants will also be introduced to the HERS Team and Lead Program Facilitator, Dr. Dawn Culpepper, and have time to connect with their peers in the cohort.

Damani White-Lewis, Assistant Professor of Higher Education, University of Pennsylvania

Dawn Culpepper, Director of the ADVANCE Program, University of Maryland, College Park

  • Understand the current landscape of faculty diversity in higher education.
  • Identify inequities and biases in faculty hiring processes related to fit, risk, job ads, and more.
  • Develop research-informed strategies for enhancing equity in faculty hiring processes.

Session 2: Faculty Workload Equity: Data-Driven, Strategic, and By Design

Inequities continue to exist in the ways faculty work is taken up, assigned, and distributed, particularly for women and faculty of color. In this session, participants will be introduced to research-backed policies and practices that foster conditions for equitable workload, with an emphasis on data and dashboards.

Dawn Culpepper, Director of the ADVANCE Program, University of Maryland, College Park

  • Identify inequities in faculty workload, particularly for marginalized groups.
  • Understand the conditions, structures, and policies that support equitable workload practices.
  • Develop strategies for creating conditions for equitable workloads, including dashboards.

Session 3: Translating Equity into Faculty Evaluation

Identifying ways to embed equity in academic reward systems is another critical step to ensure sustainability for equity in faculty life. Building on the conversations around workload, this session will share statistics on evaluation process, including tenure and promotion for faculty, highlight the inequities that exist in these processes, and offer strategies through an exploration of principles, policies, and practices.

Lindsey Templeton, Senior Associate Director of Programs and Research, HERS

Dawn Culpepper, Director of the ADVANCE Program, University of Maryland, College Park

  • Identify areas of inequity in academic reward systems, including tenure, promotion, and evaluation.
  • Understand principles, policies, and practices that can support equitable evaluation processes.
  • Develop strategies for enhancing equity in faculty evaluation.

Session 4: Enhancing Equity in Practice: Insights from Senior Leaders

In this panel conversation, participants will gain insight from senior leaders who are putting this research into practice at their own institutions.

Moderator: Dawn Culpepper, Director of the ADVANCE Program, University of Maryland, College Park

Panelists: TBA

  • Identify strategies for success based on real examples from senior leaders
  • Understand how to address challenges to enhancing faculty equity

Session 5: Gaining Buy-In and Taking Action

  • In the final session of the series, participants will learn more about initiating change through a framework rooted in equity-mindedness. They will engage in action planning and identify concrete ways to gain buy-in and improve equity at their institutions.

Lindsey Templeton, Senior Associate Director of Programs and Research, HERS

Dawn Culpepper, Director of the ADVANCE Program, University of Maryland, College Park

  • Understand framework for implementing change and how to put it into practice in the context of faculty equity
  • Identify one element related to faculty equity to focus on at their institution
  • Develop a concrete action plan with guidance from facilitators and peers

Program Facilitators

Dr. Dawn K. Culpepper, Ph.D. (she/her) is a higher education researcher and practitioner focused on creating academic work environments where faculty members thrive. She focuses on identifying organizational practices and policies that disrupt bias; enhance inclusion, equity, and representation; and foster conditions where faculty members are fully recognized and rewarded for their work.

Dawn is the Director of the University of Maryland ADVANCE Program for Inclusive Excellence. With ADVANCE, she leads faculty development, education and training, and research and evaluation activities, including efforts to engage faculty search committees in inclusive hiring practices. Dawn’s experience with ADVANCE is grounded in her expertise as an education researcher. Dawn’s work has examined faculty hiring, workload, tenure and promotion, postdoctoral training programs, work-life integration, graduate education, and faculty-related COVID-19 policies. Her work has been published in top education and diversity-related journals. Dawn has worked on multiple National Science Foundation-funded projects.

Dawn completed her Ph.D. in Higher Education at the University of Maryland and teaches graduate courses in the Student Affairs and Higher Education programs. Prior to entering academia, she worked in several education-focused non-profit organizations, including as a program director and AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer.

Damani White-Lewis, Ph.D. (he/him) is an assistant professor of higher education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. He studies racial inequality in academic careers and contexts using theories and methods from organizational behavior and social psychology. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and has appeared in The Journal of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, The Review of Higher Education, American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, and others. 

As a public scholar, he has won numerous awards from educational organizations and institutions, been featured in outlets such as ScienceInside Higher Ed, and Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, and regularly advises college campuses and external organizations on addressing issues related to the academic profession, racial equity, and institutional transformation and systemic change.

Lindsey Templeton, Ph.D. (she, her) is the Senior Associate Director of Programs and Research at HERS. In this role, Lindsey is responsible for building a diverse pool of experts, practitioners, and scholars who inform HERS curricula; assisting with development and delivery of all HERS programs; and leading assessment efforts to evaluate program effectiveness and organizational impact. Lindsey also works closely with the HERS senior leadership team on thought leadership and the development and execution of HERS’ research agenda.

Dr. Templeton has experience as an education researcher, with an emphasis on leadership and gender equity. Through research and practice, she aims to equip leaders with tools and strategies to both navigate and enhance work in the academy.  Lindsey’s recent scholarship focuses on equity in faculty workloads, hiring, and promotion and tenure processes. Before joining HERS in 2020, Lindsey worked at the University of Maryland, College Park in the ADVANCE Program for Inclusive Excellence and was Director of Research and Training for a non-profit organization focused on student leadership. She holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education from the University of Maryland and a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Richmond.

- Who should attend -

This program is open to participants of any rank interested in learning more about equity in faculty life. The strategies may be best suited for faculty and those involved in faculty support, faculty development, academic leadership, and the advancement of academic affairs, as well as those who have connections to or oversight of faculty-related policies and practices.

We strongly encourage people from the same institution who are interested in addressing faculty inequities together to register as a TEAM! Our team rate allows a group of 4 or 5 people from the same institution to participate in the program together, which can make the possibility to enact change and enhance equity in faculty life even greater.

- How EQUITY-MINDED LEADERSHIP Supports Our Mission -

Any gains in equity must support the advancement of equity for others. It is not enough for HERS to help women and gender-diverse leaders secure leadership positions if they cannot then use their new influence to implement tangible actions that close equity gaps in policies, practices, experiences, and outcomes among groups that have been historically excluded, marginalized, and underserved. This program ensures that HERS alums have the skills and knowledge to transform higher education so that it is truly equitable for every employee and every student.