Advancing Faculty Diversity Program at UC San Diego

The Advancing Faculty Diversity Cluster Hire Initiative: Strengthening STEM Research and Teaching for the Black/African American Diaspora leverages UC San Diego's institutional strengths, student needs, and opportunities to diversify faculty, research, and curriculum at the intersection of the social sciences and STEM. Located in the Physical Sciences, Biological Sciences, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the Wertheim School of Public Health, a multidisciplinary cluster hire of up to 14 faculty whose research is focused on racial/ethnic disparities in health, medicine, and the environment will contribute a significant focus on African American communities and the Black Diaspora. The cluster serves three purposes: 1) to increase faculty diversity; 2) to advance research on and for communities of color; and 3) to diversify curriculum in STEM affiliated with the DEI course requirement and African American Studies Major and Minor. This innovative proposal is both timely and globally relevant, especially as we witnessed social disparities translate into disparate health outcomes during and following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Transforming UC San Diego from an Emerging Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) to an Hispanic Serving Research Institution (HSRI) through a Latinx Cluster Hire Initiative (LCHI) leverages a strong campus commitment to diversifying the faculty while simultaneously working to fulfill our student-centered mission. As an Emerging HSI, UC San Diego is uniquely positioned to transform into an HSRI and STEM HSI with the support of leadership and commitment to meeting the curricular, co-curricular, and cultural needs of Latinx, URM and increasingly first-generation students. The LCHI will hire up to 14 faculty whose research and pedagogy focus on issues affecting and of interest to Chicanx/Latinx students. Moreover, it would leverage the Chicanx/Latinx Studies and Latin American Studies programs, strong EDI initiatives underway, and the expertise of campus Faculty Equity Advisors. A robust hiring initiative across four divisions and nine academic departments that serve a critical mass of Latinx students will serve as a catalyst for UC San Diego becoming a Latinx serving and responsive institution.

The Designing Just Futures Cluster Hire Initiative builds on UC San Diego’s previous Advancing Faculty Diversity awards and draws on the geographic, academic, institutional, and cultural strengths of our tri-national region to recruit scholars focused on design and innovation that center Indigenous, Black and migrant communities. As an interdisciplinary cluster hire, the proposal team will collaborate with the Design Lab, Indigenous Futures Institute, School of Global Policy and Strategy, Jacobs School of Engineering, School of Arts and Humanities, and School of Social Science, to recruit up to 12 scholars who work at the intersection of design and social justice. Our goal is to address significant underrepresentation in the professoriate at UC San Diego and across the UC-system and simultaneously recruit scholars whose research and service center communities, perspectives, and epistemologies of communities that have been traditionally left out of mainstream social, economic, cultural, and political systems.

Diverse Issues in Higher Education

• UC San Diego Receives Two Grants to Improve Faculty Diversity (Oct 7, 2020)

UC San Diego Today

• New Faculty Bridge Black Studies and STEM (Feb 28, 2022)
• 14 New Latinx Studies Faculty to be Hired at UC San Diego (Jul 21, 2022)
• Twelve New Faculty to Be Hired to Design Just Futures (Nov 8, 2022)
• New Faculty Reshape the Meaning of Inclusive Research, Teaching and Service (Nov 28, 2023)

Inside Higher Ed

• Promoting Institutional Change Through Inclusive Cluster Hiring: Part 1 (Oct 19, 2022)
• Promoting Institutional Change Through Inclusive Cluster Hiring: Part 2 (Oct 26, 2022)