Increasing faculty diversity is one goal of Brown's largest faculty expansion in decades; to accomplish this, the University is using a targeted hiring program created as part of the Plan for Academic Enrichment.
Of the 100 faculty positions that will be added over the next several years, 25 are allocated to the Target of Opportunity program, which allows departments to bypass the normal search process to specifically recruit scholars they deem "extraordinary."
Brenda Allen, associate provost and director of institutional diversity, said one of the University's objectives with the Target of Opportunity program "is to bring racial and gender minorities to the faculty."
According to Associate Provost Nancy Dunbar, the program seeks to increase not only racial and gender diversity, but also intellectual diversity. Dunbar said "target" individuals are identified "because of their ability to diversify the intellectual terrain, to provide a unique or diverse perspective."
Typically, the University hires faculty members to fill existing positions, such as when a professor retires or otherwise leaves the University. The Target of Opportunity program, Allen said, allows departments to create new positions to accommodate scholars they choose to recruit.
Under the targeted hiring program, departments identify scholars who are "extraordinary," Allen said, and write a proposal that President Ruth Simmons, the provost and deans review. If they approve the proposal, departments can begin recruiting.
"Whatever it takes to sell the academic environment here, we help the departments to achieve," Allen said, adding that this sometimes includes taking a candidate to dinner or arranging conversations with other faculty members.
The program's purpose is to allow the University to recruit "outstanding faculty with greater ... flexibility," Allen said. This flexibility is rooted in the program's expedited hiring process, she said. Target of Opportunity allows the University to identify an individual for immediate hire and avoid the process of committee approval, which slows hiring, she added.
Target of Opportunity hiring is faster, according to Allen, because it doesn't require placing advertisements and forming a pool of candidates to choose from.
Renowned author John Edgar Wideman came to campus in September as a Target of Opportunity hire, Allen said. Wideman - who has won an O. Henry Award for short fiction and two PEN/Faulkner Awards - has dual appointments in the departments of Africana studies and English. He is teaching one graduate seminar this academic year.
Wideman said his recruitment process "went on for six or four months" - significantly shorter than the standard process.
According to Dean of the Faculty Rajiv Vohra P'07, "the (standard hiring) process is actually pretty long. ... Many of the people who were just hired were approved a couple of years ago."
Though the Target of Opportunity program accelerates the hiring process, Allen said the standard hiring system is necessary to ensure consideration of less visible professors who might otherwise not be hired by Brown.
One-quarter of the 100 planned positions in the Plan for Academic Enrichment are Target of Opportunity openings.
Thirty-seven of the 100 faculty positions have already been filled, and during the next four to five years, 10 to 15 will be added annually. But administrators are not sure how many of the new faculty members were hired under the Target of Opportunity program.
The calculation of faculty hired is complicated by how faculty members are categorized - professors can be Target of Opportunity hires, standard Plan for Academic Enrichment hires or replacement hires, Allen said. In addition, some people the University considers to be in one category could also be included in another.
The situation is "not disorganized," Vohra said. "It is, however, complicated by the fact that not each individual we hire corresponds to exactly one position."
Allen said keeping track of faculty hired through the Target of Opportunity program is difficult because there is "too much going on, lots of things are happening simultaneously."
"It'll take a while" to clarify an exact number of positions filled through the program, she said.
