Recruitment and Hiring Subcommittee Report

Fall 2020

Subcommittee members:

  • Steve Nowicki (Professor)
  • Amanda DelVecchia (Postdoctoral Researcher)
  • Danae Diaz (Graduate student)
  • François Lutzoni (Professor)
  • Paul Magwene (Associate Professor)
  • Justin Wright (Associate Professor)

The overarching charge of the Recruitment and Hiring subcommittee is to design “outreach and recruitment processes that maximize our ability to attract candidates from underrepresented groups” across all elements of the Biology department community, including undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, faculty, and staff.

The subcommittee approached this charge both by considering the extent to which, and why, disparities in representation exist for each of these groups and by considering the agency Biology has in implementing change (that is, the extent to which Biology as a department can implement change on its own or just advocate for change if control lies elsewhere). One outcome of the subcommittee’s discussion and a subsequent discussion of the full AJED committee was the realization that many of the action items initially assigned to the Recruitment and Hiring subcommittee were highly overlapping with action items worked on by other subcommittees. These instances are noted below.

In regards to undergraduate representation:

The issue here is not a matter of recruitment, but rather a matter of retention. Duke undergraduate admissions is highly successful in attracting and admitting a very diverse student body, and there is no evidence to suggest that underrepresented students who matriculate at Duke are disproportionately less interested in pursuing STEM majors, including Biology. Thus, engaging with undergraduate admissions to improve their outreach is not a task that needs to be undertaken by the department. Rather, the issue is to ensure that students from underrepresented groups are not disproportionately discouraged from continuing their interest in Biology as a major. Two action items can directly address this issue:

  1. Ensure that introductory-level courses are inclusive and welcoming of students from all backgrounds. Note that this action item is a primary task of the AJED Education subcommittee.
  2. Increase the number of Biology faculty who participate in college advising through the Academic Advising Center (formerly referred to as “pre-major advising”), especially serving as advisors to students from underrepresented groups through programs such as the Rubenstein Scholarship for first-generation, low-income students. Note that this task is also an action item being addressed by the Inclusion and Empowerment subcommittee.

In regard to graduate representation:

Here, there is indeed an important concern that Duke Biology is not portrayed externally as a welcoming and inclusive environment for graduate training. Biology has little agency in determining how the Graduate School is portrayed (as illustrated, for example, by the Graduate School’s unwillingness to completely eliminate the GRE requirement). However, Biology does have complete control over its own external presence and recruitment efforts. Three action items follow:

  1. Ensure Biology’s presence and active recruitment in venues such as SACNAS and ABRCMS. Note that departmental leadership has already committed to this goal, and Bio staffed its own outreach booth at the 2020 SACNAS meeting.
  2. Revise Biology’s website to create explicitly welcoming and inclusive messaging, including a transparent description of the admissions process and the graduate experience in Duke Biology. Note that the department has already begun this revision, led by Dr. Marie Claire Chelini, recently hired as Science Communication Fellow for Biology and Evolutionary Anthropology, and the Directors of Graduate Studies. The Recruitment & Hiring subcommittee will work with Dr. Chelini to help review and revise the Biology department website, especially with regard to information about the Biology graduate program.
  3. Create graduate school preparation and admissions preview programs for underrepresented students. The February 2020 report of the Biology Task Force on Graduate Admissions and Recruiting recommended creating two such programs, one targeted at Duke sophomore students from underrepresented groups who are just beginning to think about the possibility of pursuing a career in academic science, and another targeted at juniors from a broader set of institutions who are closer to the point of applying to graduate programs (as is currently done by Princeton, Cornell, Brown, and several other peer institutions). The Recruitment and Hiring subcommittee agreed that this is a top priority, although the realities of the current pandemic means that a tractable first step will be to create a program for Duke students initially delivered in a remote fashion. Note that this task overlaps with the goals of the Outreach subcommittee.

Beginning in December, the Recruitment & Hiring and Outreach subcommittees will convene a group of upper-class Biology majors and graduate students coming from underrepresented groups, including low-income and first-generation students to help brainstorm the content for a pilot program to be run in the Spring 2021 semester. Following this brainstorming session, graduate students and faculty will be recruited to complete the implementation and delivery of this program. It is essential to emphasize that the implementation and delivery of the program is understood to be the responsibility of faculty with the assistance of Biology graduate students, and not seen as the responsibility of students of particular backgrounds or demographics who may already face higher demands on their time and energy.

In regard to postdoc representation:

The primary goal listed in the original charge to the Recruitment & Hiring subcommittee was to ensure that all postdoctoral positions are posted on Academic Jobs Online and also advertised on job listings that target underrepresented groups, such as DiversifyEEB (https://diversifyeeb.com). The subcommittee learned that advertising postdoctoral positions in Academic Jobs Online is already Biology department policy.

The Recruitment & Hiring subcommittee recommends that the Biology department further agrees to implement a mechanism for ensuring broader listing, such as by requiring advertisement copies prior to submitting offer letters for approval.

In regard to faculty representation:

Current Biology faculty and leadership have already expressed strong support for increasing faculty diversity, as has the dean and her leadership team in Trinity College. Unfortunately, the pace of faculty hiring across all departments was greatly slowed by financial constraints even before the negative economic impact of the ongoing pandemic. The good news, however, is that the Provost is initiating a program with support of The Duke Endowment[1] that will specifically target hiring of faculty from underrepresented groups. Biology will, of course, participate in this process. In the advent of future searches, the Department will ensure that a wide diversity of potential candidates is contacted. An example would be the recent cohort of MOSAIC K99/R00 awardees (https://loop.nigms.nih.gov/2020/08/mosaic-announcements-and-upcoming-we…).

In regard to staff representation:

A challenge with hiring diverse staff is that many qualified applicants in the Triangle region may not consider Duke (or any local academic institution) as a place where they would look for employment. The subcommittee discussed the case of a recently advertised position in the Biology greenhouses, which did not attract a diverse pool of candidates even though the region has many greenhouse and landscaping businesses where highly qualified candidates would likely be found.

The Recruitment & Hiring subcommittee will offer to arrange a brain-storming session with Biology department manager Randy Smith to consider new ways to advertise staff openings that might be effective in attracting more diverse candidates to future

[1] The Duke Endowment is a private philanthropic organization located in Charlotte, NC, and should not be confused with Duke University’s own endowment.