Bartlett to leave Gonzaga in May
Thuy-Dzuong Nguyen
Issue date: 4/27/07 Section: News
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"Bob has made me feel welcome at Gonzaga ever since I first met him," said sophomore Christina Castillo. He and his family will remain in the Spokane area.
Asked about his departure, he had some parting questions about diversity at Gonzaga and a perceived decrease in diversity during his time on campus. He hopes more people of color can be hired into faculty and staff positions and to "elevate the conversation to a broader one ... why there's such a lack of diversity at Gonzaga and who's going to be held accountable for that to change."
Tracking the race/ethnicity of Gonzaga employees is a controversial topic. For statistical purposes, the Center for Equal Opportunity on campus keeps count to report to the federal government, according to equal opportunity officer Victoria Loveland. The ethnic count covers all teaching positions except adjuncts. The faculty is about 8.9 percent persons of color, and the student body is about 15.3 percent persons of color as of fall 2006.
Employees' racial/ethnic identifiers are self-selected, Loveland said. Another difficulty is in the racial and ethnic categories mandated by the federal government. The federal government's definition for "white" includes people of Middle Eastern and Eastern European descent, both of whom are in the minority at Gonzaga.
As a result, the actual number of ethnic minorities employed at Gonzaga could be significantly more or less than the number reported.
Academic Vice President Dr. Stephen Freedman agrees there is work to be done, but he sees and takes part in collaborative efforts to hire more people from underrepresented groups. One of the biggest challenges, he said, is the lack of diversity in the Spokane area compared to other geographic locations.
"It's harder for us to recruit faculty who are from underrepresented groups because some of those faculty might want more ... services and a community identity that would make them and their families more comfortable," Freedman said.
"We're going to keep at it," he said. "We need to create incentives, we need to work with other educational institutions in the area to partner, we need to be as proactive as possible in seeking out faculty from underrepresented groups ... I think we can be successful."
Last semester's draft document for the University's Strategic Plan included the goal of increasing "newly-hired staff; tenured, tenure-track, and fixed-term faculty from diverse ethnic, racial and gender groups" by 1.5 to 2 percent per year, which is an annual increase of anywhere between 5 and 15 employees of those classifications.
Please click on the headphones icon to listen to an audio clip of a statement from Bartlett.
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FACULTY HIRING PROCESS
The college or school acknowledges a job opening and releases a job advertisement. Open positions are advertised in professional journals, the Chronicle of Higher Education, or other venues.
A faculty search committee narrows qualifications and requirements and identifies bonus qualities. These bonus qualities include being a member of an underrepresented group, which depends on the current makeup of the department that is hiring. Women, for example, could count as underrepresented in a mostly male department. Qualifiers can include gender, race/ethnicity and specialty.
During the search, the Equal Opportunity Office provides the search committee with a list of applicants that is updated weekly. This list includes the race/ethnicity of each applicant.
The search committee then makes its recommendation(s) to the school's dean, who makes the hire in conjunction with the academic vice president and the president.
Gonzaga University is an equal opportunity employer but does not use a quota system: In exchange for federal funding, the university promises to make a good faith commitment to hire from historically underrepresented groups.
Source: Center for Equal Opportunity at Gonzaga