Enact Our Commitment to Equity
The second principle of our 2020 Contingency Plan is to continue to enact our commitment to equity. Over the past several years, the College has implemented several initiatives to improve faculty recruitment and retention rates. We have overhauled procedures to align with equitable search best practices and hired 9 BIPOC faculty (5 African American) over the past three years or 32% of all tenure-stream hires (9/28) and 50% (4/8) in AY 19-20. We have developed proactive retention policies, both College leadership fellows and mentoring fellows’ programs, and continue work on an equitable policies review at the College and Department/Center levels. Over the past two years, we have successfully retained all tenure-stream African American faculty in the College and hired two new Black faculty in the new Department of African American and African Studies, including a new inaugural chair, Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown, who was recently appointed as an MSU Foundatio