In 1996, two Kenyan scholars were awarded Fulbright Scholarships — honors the U.S. Department of State grants to promising young academics worldwide.

Fred Muyia Nafukho, who joined the 91̽�� earlier this year as the vice provost for academic personnel, vividly remembers the day he was called to the U.S. embassy in Nairobi.

Nafukho learned he would attend Louisiana State University, but his colleague, the other Kenyan awardee that year, was going to “the finest and best university in the United States,” Nafukho remembers an attaché saying.

“She said, ‘The 91̽��, not in D.C., but in Seattle.’ That’s the first time I heard about the 91̽��,” Nafukho recalled in a recent interview.

Decades later, his colleague has returned to Kenya and is a preeminent scientist there. Nafukho stayed in the U.S., where he’s built a reputation of advancing equity and inclusion, most recently as the senior associate dean for faculty affairs at Texas A&M University.

Since February, Nafukho has been on a tour of the UW, listening, observing and learning.

“I have seen the mission threads of inclusive excellence, including diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, not only emphasized by the leadership at the UW, but also practiced,” Nafukho said.

According to a report by the Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Personnel, the 91̽��had more than 4,800 professorial faculty members in 2022. Of those members,3,092 whose race was reported were white and 2,592 were male, roughly 54%. Of the remaining faculty, 881 were Asian, 247 were Hispanic, 137 were Black, 23 were American Indian, and seven were Pacific Islander.

While more work remains, Nafukho said the success in hiring diverse faculty is a result of multiple programs the 91̽��has in place and of a comprehensive approach from university leaders, what he calls “Shared Equity Leadership.”

“It requires all of us leaders across the university in our tri-campus system to work together,” Nafukho said.

While encouraging, faculty-hiring figures fluctuate year to year and are dependent on a variety of factors, including retirements. As a result, Nafukho said, the 91̽��instead should measure success by focusing on a supportive learning and working environment that builds a sense of belonging. In that way, he aims to transform the Office of Academic Personnel into what he calls the office of “Faculty Success.”

That begins with intentional faculty recruitment, development, and retention, Nafukho said, and by scaling existing successful programs.

Chadwick Allen, the associate vice provost for faculty advancement, works with hiring teams across the university to implement practices that interrupt bias.

“Everyone thinks they know how to do this well, and then they really start doing it and realize the complexity,” he said. “Particularly if people are trying to diversify their hiring pools of applicants.”

Allen said much of his work is about intentionally changing the culture and redefining how various fields define excellence.

Because various disciplines have different entrenched cultures, no one approach to diversification is effective across the board.

The UW’s ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change has been advocating for women faculty in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields since 2001. Originally funded by the National Science Foundation, the center’s work today is supported by academic units including the College of Engineering, the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of the Environment, and the Office of the Provost.

In 2004, more than a decade before ascending to her role as 91̽��President, Ana Mari Cauce was a principal investigator for ADVANCE. Today, Joyce Yen is the center’s full-time director.

“We can see over the course of those 20-plus years increases in not only the number of women faculty, but also the diversity of those women faculty in terms of race and ethnicity,” Yen said.

It’s more than just hiring. It’s also about creating a professional development ecosystem that supports faculty at different stages throughout their career, she said. Because the 91̽��must compete with well-resourced industry jobs and higher salaries at private universities, fostering community on campus is key to retention.

“Multiple people have told me that part of the reason they stay at the 91̽��is because of the community that they found through our resources,” Yen said. “We’re not the only thing, but we’re part of the equation that contributes to their sense of belonging, their sense of connection, and feeling valued at the university.”

Different efforts have taken shape across the UW, including the Faculty Development Program, led by Alexes Harris, a 91̽��Faculty Regent and a professor of sociology.

At 91̽��Medicine, creating an environment where all professionals can thrive is vital to the success of delivering quality health care, said Paula Houston, 91̽��Medicine’s chief equity officer and an affiliate professor of family medicine.

That includes a variety of opportunities for early career faculty, such as the . Now run by Dr. Michelle Terry, a clinical professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the assistant dean for Underrepresented in Medicine and Science (URMS) Career Development, SURF creates community and help foster skills to succeed in academia.

Another program, , is a cohort of mid-career professionals, many of whom identify as URMS, with the aim of diversifying leadership.

People on the outside of the organization can peer in and see faculty who represent the communities we serve who are successful and being tapped for senior roles, Houston said.

“As they get into leadership positions, they have the opportunity to create pathways for other underrepresented or systemically marginalized people to come into the organization,” she said.

While 91̽��Medicine has made strides forward in the past several years, it’s important to continue to reach out to young people from diverse communities to pursue higher education and medicine. The Office of Healthcare Equity, led by Houston, does this through the programs in the the . Through focused community outreach and advocacy, these programs develop the ecosystem from which we can engage young people to pursue careers in healthcare and thus become our future leaders.

Across the university, too, there’s more work that needs to be done, Nafukho said. He’s hopeful that academic departments will use their discretionary budgets to fund collaborative efforts that build camaraderie.

In 2021, then-Provost Mark Richards announced a multimillion-dollar effort to diversify UW’s faculty. This year, Tricia Serio begins her work as provost, including an intentional effort to build on the programs Richards initiated.

For now, Nafukho said he’s confirmed what he heard many years ago at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi.

“The 91̽��is one of the finest and best universities in the United States,” he said. “So in the Office of Academic Personnel we are committed to becoming the office of faculty success.”

He called for ongoing cooperation, working across academic units, colleges, schools and campuses.

“We have to work collaboratively with others across the university. Working in silos cannot take us far,” Nafukho said. “I strongly believe that when our faculty are successful, they in turn ensure that our students are successful.”

Enclosing 50 acres, the mounds form an octagon that is connected to a circle. This is , located in central Ohio, and it’s one of thousands of Indigenous mounds across the eastern half of North America.

is a professor of English and American Indian studies at the 91̽��, and he studies Native American earthworks and cultural erasure. The Octagon Earthworks, he explains, is actually a gigantic clock designed using substantial astronomical knowledge. In this episode, Allen traces the past, present and future of mound earthworks, which he describes as feats of astronomy, engineering and coordinated labor.

This is the seventh of eight episodes of “Ways of Knowing,” a podcast highlighting how studies of the humanities can reflect everyday life. Through a partnership between The World According to Sound and the 91̽��, each episode features a faculty member from the 91̽��College of Arts & Sciences, the work that inspires them, and suggested resources for learning more about the topic.

Next | Episode 8: Translation

When starting her latest book,����set out to write a cultural history of “Essence” — the first mainstream, glossy magazine aimed at Black American women. She wanted to explore “Essence” as a brand, making sense of how it started and evolved.

But during her research, “” blossomed into something much more comprehensive.

“Really it’s about when United States corporations started to understand Black women as a unique consumer niche,” said Tounsel, assistant professor of Black studies in communication at the 91̽��. “As I realized that was really the story I was telling, that’s what led me to this concept of Black Girl Magic.

“The book looks at how Black womanhood has been branded. How have images of Black women been monetized from this moment of Black Power, which is late 1960s, to this moment of Black Girl Magic, the moment that we’re in right now?”

“Branding Black Womanhood” was published in June by Rutgers University Press.

CaShawn Thompson, an author, social media influencer and educator, started #BlackGirlMagic in 2013 when she noticed how Black women and girls were being denigrated on Twitter. She wanted to establish a hashtag as a counter narrative, Tounsel said.

“Then it took off,” Tounsel said. “I compare it in the book to Black is Beautiful, which is another motto that we’ve seen get monetized and used by corporations to draw in a particular consumer market.”

A few years after its creation, two companies — Essence and a media organization called Black Girls Rock — tried to get the trademark to Black Girl Magic.

“The woman who actually came up with the hashtag is completely left out of this legal dispute,” Tounsel said. “CaShawn Thompson said it beautifully and I quote her in the book: ‘Black Girl Magic went from being something that you are to something that you own. It went from being this empowerment narrative to a commodity.’

“That is something that happens with all kinds of iconic images and mottos, especially when we’re thinking about consumer markets that are constituted by people from marginalized groups. Companies don’t really know how to talk to us. They tend to just regurgitate whatever they can pick up on.”

The founders of Essence showed companies how to talk to Black women, Tounsel said.

“They were the guardians of Black women as a consumer niche,” she said. “The other interesting thing is that Essence in and of itself is the precursor to Black Girl Magic. Essence set about creating the ‘Essence woman,’ and her granddaughter is Black Girl Magic. These two ideas are reflective of a certain type of glamorous, consuming Black woman figure who understands that her most empowered self is facilitated through purchases.”

Despite her critique, Tounsel said she understands the joy Black women experience from seeing a wider range of images that reflect them.

“There is nothing wrong with that, but that’s not political power,” Tounsel said. “That is a form of recognition and I think it’s important and could perhaps be marshalled to impact the conditions that Black girls and women live in. Being called ‘magic’ may make you feel good, but it doesn’t change your material reality.”’

For more information, contact Tounsel at��timeka@uw.edu.

Reexamining Indigenous mounds through Native voices

In “,”����reexamines Indigenous mounds by centering Native American voices.

Allen, professor of English at the UW, worked alongside Native writers, artists and intellectuals to highlight the accomplishments of North America’s mound-building cultures and draw attention to new earthworks.

The idea for the book stemmed from Allen’s first academic job as a professor at Ohio State University. He wanted to bring ancient Indigenous earthworks – burial, civic and ceremonial structures – into his literary studies classroom. He started looking for texts, artwork and performance pieces that engaged mounds and the principles that uphold their construction and use.

“Eventually, I also started actively looking for Indigenous engagements with mounds through built environments,” Allen said.

The result was “Earthworks Rising,” published in March by University of Minnesota Press. Each section of the book is organized around a descriptive category for Indigenous earthworks, which are effigy mounds, platform mounds and burial mounds. The sections also align with the three-worlds theory of mound-building cultures: an upper world, a surface world and a lower world.

“Constructed mounds can be understood as markers of highly structured Indigenous civilizations and as locations of concentrated political, social and spiritual power,” Allen said.�� “They can also be understood as portals that enable contact between ancestors and descendants, the living and the dead.”

In the book’s introduction, Allen considers how earthworks were perceived by non-Indigenous commentators. Even though the creation of the mounds required sophisticated planning, design and construction, these accomplishments were devalued or ignored. Earthworks represent profound achievements in mathematics, design, engineering and astronomy.

“Hundreds or thousands of years ago, mounds were purposely located and specifically designed to cite connections,” Allen said. “These connections were to ancient ancestors, past locations of dwelling or ceremonies, entities emanating from the cosmos and the origins of the community or the land.”

For more information, contact Allen at��callen3@uw.edu.��

On friendship and mangos in Mauritania

’s memoir “” documents four decades of life in a Mauritanian village, beginning when she joined the Peace Corps in 1984 and was posted to the village of Cive, Mauritania.

The book was published in June by Apprentice House Press.

“It’s a story that’s been with me for a long time,” said Baird, professor of economics at 91̽��Tacoma. “My time in the Peace Corps was such an incredible experience. I have been back to the village a couple of times and every time I go back, my understanding of it changes because I have more information and can see what transpired with the passage of time.”

Mauritania gained independence in 1960, so it was a relatively new country when Baird first arrived. At the time, the village was going through a horrific drought that lasted decades, and villages were converting from rain-fed cereal grains to irrigated rice.

The death of Mamadou Konate, a man Baird worked most closely with while living in Cive, prompted her to write the book. Konate, who died in 2012, was a farmer from the slave caste who forms a central part of the book.

“He was sort of the de facto village chief,” Baird said. “I imagined he saw me as somebody who wasn’t going to last more than a couple months. I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t know anything about irrigated rice, but I was there as the ‘irrigated rice expert’ from the government. I was extremely insecure about what I was doing in this village.”

Baird stayed, growing confidence as she learned the language, formed friendships and talked more with Konate. He wanted to acquire mango trees, which are drought tolerant and thrive in warm weather. Baird had attended a seminar about mangos, so the two collaborated to bring trees to the village – a move that inspired the title of the book.

“It took me 10 years to write this book,” Baird said. “For me, part of the story was learning how to write a very different genre than I’m used to. My interest in writing the book was not at all to talk about myself. It took me a long time to put myself in it and find my voice.”

For more information, contact Baird at��kebaird@uw.edu.

Programs to support current and future Native American students, along with both undergraduate and graduate research in the Indigenous humanities, will benefit from a $1.8 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The nearly year-old 91̽��Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies on Sept. 16 received the award, which will fund four years of work at the 91̽��around Native student support, academics, research and cultural programs.

“We spent the first year planning the center from the ground up, meeting with Native faculty, students, staff and community research partners across the 91̽��campuses,” said co-director ��a 91̽��associate professor of American Indian Studies. “Through one-on-one meetings, a survey, and writing retreats, we envisioned creating strong communities where we can support and learn from each other. This Mellon grant will go a long way in helping us re-engineer the university to meet these needs.”

The New York-based Mellon Foundation, which supports the humanities in higher education and the arts, awarded the grant in recognition of UW’s potential to be a leader among state flagship universities in the growing field of Indigenous Studies.

The 91̽�� launched in fall 2018 to bring together the faculty and students involved in American Indian and Indigenous studies, an interdisciplinary field of research that intersects the social sciences, arts and humanities, education and natural sciences. Nearly a dozen units, including the Provost’s Office, the Graduate School, 91̽��Libraries, 91̽��Tacoma and 91̽��Bothell, contributed to the initial funding of the Center and related activities, a total of over $1 million spread over five years. The Center has a Deans’ advisory board as well as an overall advisory board of Native undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff and community research partners.

American Indian, Alaska Native and Pacific Islander students make up an estimated 1% of undergraduates at the UW, and 0.4% of the total faculty. That underrepresentation could begin to change, Vice President for the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity Rickey Hall said, with a campus environment that boosts staffing and activities focused on the Native community.

With the new grant, the center can continue an existing seminar for graduate students — the Summer Institute on Global Indigeneities — and create five new programs for undergraduates, graduates and transfer students:

• The Native 91̽��Scholars Program, a cohort-based program for incoming freshmen that will partner with the wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House to host a one-week residential experience in the summer, an orientation program with parents, a year-long seminar and peer mentorships
• The Native Pathways @ 91̽��Program, which will support 91̽��graduate students to teach at two-year and tribal colleges in the area, host a regional Indigenous Studies Higher Education Pedagogy Summit, and support the development of new coursework in AIIS
• experiences, which will provide training and support to undergraduate students undertaking humanities research in American Indian and Indigenous studies through a two-week summer program and peer mentorships to other relevant research experiences across the campuses
• The AIIS Scholars Program, focused on building community among graduate students, faculty and staff through a monthly space to workshop AIIS projects
• The Native Knowledge-in-Residence Program, an initiative to bring Native scholars to the 91̽��to teach classes, offer workshops and supervise research, among other activities

“The Mellon grant will allow us to better leverage the UW’s existing infrastructure for connecting with Native communities; supporting Native students, staff and faculty; and producing innovative scholarship in the expanding field of Indigenous studies,” said center co-director a 91̽��professor of English and associate vice provost for faculty advancement.

The Center can begin implementing the grant immediately, Dennison said. The first priority is to hire the Native Pathways @ 91̽��coordinator to run the new programs.

“Central to our goal of fostering Indigenous communities at the 91̽��is creating a space in which Native knowledge, especially the languages, can thrive,” Dennison said.

The Native Knowledge-in-Residence program will bring Native specialists to the UW’s campuses to teach a sequence of courses in the Department of American Indian Studies, host regular knowledge tables, supervise research projects, offer lectures and workshops, develop curricula, and build partnerships with Indian education programs to create pathways for Native students to and through the university. The first resident of that program will be , a lecturer in American Indian Studies and an expert on the Southern Lushootseed language, the traditional language of the lands that support the 91̽��.

It’s an important time for American Indian and Indigenous studies in general, said , associate professor and chair of American Indian Studies. “As Canada undergoes an examination of its own history of violence and trauma involving Indigenous peoples, educational institutions there are investing heavily in Indigenous studies. U.S. institutions should do the same.”

While the increased activity and investment around AIIS may be new, the presence of American Indian Studies at 91̽��is not.�� Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the Department of American Indian Studies, which started as a small program in 1970. Additional momentum around American Indian and Indigenous studies on the 91̽��campus has come from the creation of the wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House, the Bill Holm Center, First Nations @ UW, the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute, the iNative Research group, .

“The 91̽��and our partners are now at a point where we can do more than simply reach out to communities that have been marginalized and underserved — we can actually begin to transform academic space across disciplines, working to create supportive ecosystems in which Indigenous peoples and our relations can thrive,” Allen said.

Other 91̽��faculty involved in writing the grant were , associate professor of anthropology, and , associate professor in the Jackson School of International Studies.

For more information on the Mellon grant or CAIIS, contact caiis@uw.edu.

On the 91̽�� campus, the study of American Indian and Indigenous issues isn’t confined to a single department. Or, for that matter, to any one 91̽��building, research institute or museum that explicitly focuses on various aspects of Native communities.

While each of these campus units is thriving on its own, what’s missing is a link to bring together the diverse faculty and students involved in American Indian and Indigenous studies, an interdisciplinary field of research that intersects the social sciences, arts and humanities, education and natural sciences.

Now, as the discipline of American Indian Studies approaches its 50^th year at the UW, a new research center is in the works: the Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, which is supported by multiple colleges and schools. Led by , associate professor of both American Indian Studies and anthropology, and , professor of English and associate vice provost for faculty advancement, the center aims to support research in American Indian and Indigenous Studies across the three 91̽��campuses, as well as with surrounding Native communities.

In its first year the center will solicit input from interested individuals not only on the three 91̽��campuses, but also from surrounding Native communities. In committing to support American Indian and Indigenous faculty, students, staff and communities, Dennison said, the center must first determine what kinds of support are most needed.

“My goal with the center is to facilitate conversations around what it means to do American Indian and Indigenous studies well,” she said. “We have amazing programming and resources, but we’re not all connected. We’re doing this work in silos. We’re hoping that the center can build bridges across silos, connect folks doing this work, and foster relationships across campuses and with local Native communities and nations.”

Approved in late spring under former Provost Jerry Baldasty, the center was officially organized in September through a governance committee of four deans from the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Education, the College of the Environment and the Information School. The Department of American Indian Studies will serve as the center’s academic home, and an advisory board recently formed to start planning programs and outreach activities.

Nearly a dozen units, including the Provost’s Office, the Graduate School, 91̽��Tacoma and 91̽��Bothell, have contributed to fund the center and related activities, a total of more than $1 million over five years.

Discussion of a research center had been circulating for years, but it intensified this past year as a potential means of retaining faculty, particularly in the Department of American Indian Studies, professor and chair said. When it comes to the discipline, few other universities have the academic infrastructure the 91̽��has, he added, but several have been promoting additional resources and recruiting faculty.

Through the new center, Teuton said, the 91̽��can build on its strengths, from its geographic location to ongoing scholarship and community outreach, like that driven by the College of the Environment, the College of Education and the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute in the School of Social Work. By bringing people from different units together, offering more research opportunities to graduate students and collaborating with Native communities, he said, the Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies is better positioned to elevate scholarship and create impact. The issues that often come up among Native communities — language revitalization, food sovereignty, environmental stewardship, governance and Indigenous education — are also areas of interest among current faculty and students.

Researchers around campus have asked about working with Native communities, but they’re often not sure how to approach the work as a partnership, Teuton said, and the center could facilitate that.

While leaders say the precise name of the center may change — to something in the native Coast Salish language of Southern Lushootseed, for example — the idea of building stronger partnerships with both American Indian and Indigenous peoples is central.

The term “American Indian” is itself a construct, Allen pointed out. How do you recognize First Nations peoples in Canada, who are separated from Native communities in the United States by only a line of latitude? What about other Indigenous peoples across the hemisphere and around the world, many of whom share similar histories of colonialism?

“Indigenous studies always starts with the local. Whose land are we on? What’s the history of this place?” Allen said. “The local is always the foundation, but set within the reality of the global. We don’t pretend that our communities here somehow exist within a bubble. So we need to ask, what kind of name will make people feel the center is doing the kind of responsible work we want to be doing?”

The timing is right to raise the profile of the discipline at the UW, he said. A new graduate certificate in American Indian and Indigenous Studies is being developed for next year. Several support and advisory groups are in place, serving all levels of the university, and there is potential to expand on new partnerships between the Department of American Indian Studies and community colleges around the state, which enroll approximately 4,500 Native students.

As the center continues to develop, leaders say collaboration is the key, with various ways for the campus community to be involved. The structure of the leadership was intentional — Allen will serve as co-director for one year, Dennison for three — and members of the advisory board will have staggered terms to allow others to join. The leadership expects to reach out to the broader campus about the center’s mission and programs later this year.

“It’s a very Indigenous way of doing things,” Teuton said. “Everyone shares what they have to contribute, and together it creates something wonderful. Something bigger comes out of our collective effort.”

###

For more information, contact the center at caiis@uw.edu.

Like post-secondary schools across the country, the 91̽�� has struggled to attract and retain a talented, diverse faculty.

But efforts that have been quietly underway for a few years are starting to pay off, attracting top-level candidates to the 91̽��even over schools that are able to offer bigger salaries and more perks. That work involves not simply convincing excellent candidates to come to the UW, but creating a supportive and inclusive environment that prompts them to stay, said , the UW’s associate vice provost for faculty advancement, who was hired in 2015 to help increase faculty diversity on campus.

“The money helps. We know that,” Allen said. “But after a certain threshold, we still need to compete in other ways. It’s not just about the money.”

Over the last four years, the UW’s Office for Faculty Advancement has helped recruit close to 50 faculty members whose work contributes to campus diversity and inclusion — many of these from historically underrepresented groups — including 18 starting this fall, through a multipronged approach that considers everything from how positions are advertised to helping faculty members balance competing demands for their time.

That starts with appealing to highly skilled candidates. To that end, faculty representatives attend academic conferences to scout for potential candidates, introduce themselves and talk up the university. The university has started jointly advertising positions in multiple departments focused on areas of study involving minority populations to signal to applicants that they would have potential allies on campus.

Faculty from various departments and schools also serve on each other’s search committees and meet with candidates. Last year, for example, the university brought four African-American female candidates to campus to interview for a position in black feminism in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and coordinated their visits with the Department of American Ethnic Studies, which was hiring for a position focused on African-American history.

‘A network of people’

When applicants come for interviews, Allen encourages the hiring unit to arrange for them to meet with faculty members or graduate students from other departments whose work intersects with theirs. It can also be helpful to provide opportunities for candidates to meet other people from underrepresented backgrounds on campus and to let them know about social and cultural aspects of Seattle that might interest them. Knowing they will become part of a larger diverse community can make a critical difference for minority candidates who might otherwise feel isolated, Allen said.

“Everyone wants a community,” he said. “And that doesn’t have to be in the same department, but you want to know there’s a network of people who understand your work, who you can collaborate with, an intellectual community as well as a social community.”

, the UW’s new vice president for the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity and chief diversity officer, sees recruiting a diverse faculty as the purview not only of administrators, but also of faculty and staff. He encourages faculty members who meet promising candidates at meetings or other events to let them know about the 91̽��or even ask them to send their CV.

“Diversity and inclusion is everybody’s everyday responsibility,” said Hall, who started his position in August. “The type of faculty we want to have here at the 91̽�� — top-notch, top-tier researchers — everybody’s going to be going after those folks. We need to be recruiting all the time.”

For Hall, those efforts start with building a pipeline of minority students who can become the next generation of 91̽��faculty. That means exposing undergraduates to research early with the goal of sparking their interest in academic careers, he said, and informing them about the appeal of life as a faculty member.

“We need to do a better job of talking about that, to undergraduate students and certainly to graduate students,” he said.

‘Everyone comes knocking’

But hiring a diverse and inclusive faculty is only half the challenge. Keeping people long-term is perhaps even more difficult.

The UW’s hiring and retention efforts are bolstered by $1 million in funding this academic year, including a first-time allocation of $500,000 earmarked for retention. The 91̽��has traditionally done a good job of hiring and supporting junior faculty members, Allen said, but as their careers ascend through major grants, book publishing or high-profile research, they are at risk of being hired away by other universities.

“People from underrepresented backgrounds, if they’re at all good — and anyone who’s gotten a job here is good — have many, many options,” Allen said. “We often hire really well at the junior level, we mentor these colleagues well, we nurture their careers, and the minute they get national attention, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Harvard, everyone comes knocking.”

A cornerstone of the UW’s retention effort is its membership in the , a Detroit-based company that provides workshops and intensive mentoring to help all faculty, but especially women and people from underrepresented backgrounds, move forward in their careers while balancing competing demands. That balance can be particularly challenging for underrepresented faculty members, who are often sought out for committees that would otherwise lack diversity. Additionally, minority graduate and professional students frequently request women and faculty of color as advisers, Allen said.

“If there’s a department with nine white men and one woman of color, who gets asked to be on every committee?” he said. “It’s hard to say no when you get asked.”

Last year, the 91̽��paid for 20 faculty members across its three campuses to go through the center’s 12-week Faculty Success Program, also known as its “boot camp,” at a cost of $3,250 each. In a follow-up survey, 91 percent of participants said their work-life balance had improved after participating in the program and 100 percent reported increased productivity.

University leaders are also focused on the need to create an inclusive and diverse culture at the departmental level. With approximately 2,200 tenured and tenure-track faculty members across 16 colleges and schools, that’s no easy task, said Norma Rodriguez, director of the 91̽��Office for Faculty Advancement.

“These are complex issues, because departments have their own localized culture, and then the college has a culture, and the university has a culture,” she said. “We want departments and units to think about culture at the local level and how they can positively affect that to contribute to retention.”

Efforts to increase faculty diversity at the 91̽��dovetail with the university’s Race and Equity Initiative, launched by President in April 2015 to combat institutional bias by actively encouraging dialogue and engaging the community. Hall said the commitment of Cauce and other university leaders to make meaningful changes around diversity — along with the UW’s “cutting-edge” programs to support academic achievement among underrepresented students — were significant factors in his decision to take the job.

“The 91̽�� has a long and storied history in terms of equity, diversity and inclusion. It hasn’t always been good, but the leadership is really committed to struggling with some difficult issues,” he said.

“There are people here who are committed to making this a place that is welcoming, inclusive and affirming of all our students, faculty and staff.”

Allen said faculty diversity is both a local and national challenge that requires a multigenerational approach.

“Our success has to be measured in more than one way,” he said. “How fair and effective are our processes for recruitment and retention? How inclusive are we able to make our colleges and schools? How well does our faculty support the needs of our diverse student body and of our diverse communities?

“And, perhaps most important, we need to think about what we are doing to help produce a larger cohort of diverse graduate and professional students who can become the faculty of the future.”