The Faculty Hiring Checklist is being piloted across campus to help efforts by hiring managers and search committees to attract and hire the best, most diverse faculty and leadership consistent with TCU’s high standards of inclusive excellence.
The Faculty Hiring Checklist, available for download on the Provost’s website under Faculty Resources, is a step-by-step checklist that works in tandem with TCU’s PageUp system and encompasses the entire hiring process from beginning to end, including committee selection, recruitment, job postings, interviews, hiring and onboarding. It is a collaboration between deans, department chairs, hiring managers, diversity advocates and search committees who, as leaders, set the tone for the department and college by helping to make TCU a truly welcoming and increasingly diverse campus.
“Our goal is to make hiring guidance more accessible to search committees by representing the information as a sequential to-do list that aligns with each step of the hiring process and provides examples of recruitment plans, interview questions and evaluation rubrics,” said Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. “The Faculty Hiring Checklist, the Shared-Cost Hiring Initiative and the DEI Scholars Program are a three-pronged approach towards achieving our goals for faculty inclusive excellence and diversity.
The checklist helps search committees create strategies to reach the best, most diverse applicant pool, including how the committee and department will engage their professional networks to encourage high-quality applicants from historically underrepresented groups. It encompasses assessment rubrics that align with the job qualifications and the candidates’ diversity, equity and inclusion statement. It ensures that all candidates receive the same questions in the same order, including questions to demonstrate the candidate’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.
The checklist should be downloaded and used for all faculty searches. Upon approval of a new search, hiring managers will follow the steps on the checklist from the beginning, and then upload the completed list to the TCU Box folder at the end of the hiring process. For searches already in advanced stages by December 1, 2021, hiring managers will utilize the checklist at the corresponding stage of the search, not from the beginning. The Provost’s Office will contact all hiring managers and deans for new and current searches to provide links to the checklist and TCU Box folder.
The Faculty Hiring Checklist is based on a hiring guide developed in the AddRan College of Liberal Arts in 2018 and supported by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion since 2019. The College Diversity Advocates helped create the first draft of the checklist in 2020 using the AddRan guide. A version of the checklist was piloted in the Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences in Spring 2021. Throughout 2021 the checklist has been discussed with the Provost’s Council and Faculty Senate, and a final draft was vetted with faculty members representing hiring managers, chairs, associate deans and faculty senators.
“I found it beneficial to have best-practice steps laid out in writing. The checklist was easy to use, made the process smooth, helped the committee know that we hadn’t forgotten to do something, and yielded a diverse selection of candidates,” said Emily Lund, associate professor in the Davies School of Communication Sciences and Disorders and associate dean for research for Harris College, who utilized the checklist in Spring 2021 as hiring manager.
“The checklist provided search committees with the tools needed to work under a unified lens,” said Harris College Diversity Advocate Lynita Yarbrough, assistant professor of professional practice and bilingual speech-language pathologist. “The steps led to deliberate acts resulting in casting wider nets and attracting highly qualified individuals with unique perspectives. This is exciting as we strive toward diversifying our faculty. It’s how we lead on.”
As a pilot program, we welcome your feedback as you use the checklist. A feedback form, as well as FAQs and answers, are available at Faculty Hiring Checklist Pilot Program.