A $40 Million Commitment to Faculty Diversity

April 3, 2019

Members of the Rutgers Community:

World-class teaching and research require a diverse faculty, and Rutgers is firmly committed to enhancing its faculty diversity. I am therefore pleased to announce that I am extending the Faculty Diversity Hiring Initiative—a nearly $22 million program initially set to expire in July 2021—to continue through fiscal year 2024, with an additional $20 million in strategic funding from my office. This extension will enable schools and departments to hire additional cohorts using this supplemental funding, beginning in the 2019-20 academic year. The initiative will thus total more than $40 million and underscores the ongoing commitment of University leadership to assist our schools and departments in attracting and retaining a world-class faculty that embodies our dedication to diversity and inclusion.

We are building on a program that is already making a difference. Three and a half years ago, I approved a proposal to dedicate $21.8 million in strategic funding to an initiative that would focus on creating a diverse recruitment pool, hiring excellent faculty, and mentoring and retaining these scholars. These funds, allocated over a five-year period from 2017 through 2021, are supplementing departments’ hiring of faculty to increase their diversity. Under the initiative, the University provides half the salary support for the first three years of each qualified newly hired faculty member’s service at Rutgers, along with additional funds to support mentoring and retention activities.

Since its inception in the fall of 2016, seventy-nine faculty have been hired through this salary support program, in addition to other diverse faculty whose salaries are supported by departments and schools.

While faculty within departments and schools ultimately make hiring decisions for individual faculty members, the University leadership strives to provide the funds and the environment to enable our schools to hire the best scholars, helping to ensure that our faculty better reflects the broad diversity of our student body and our state. These funds provide the resources our departments need to recruit, hire, and retain outstanding faculty from groups who have been traditionally underrepresented in their fields.

I look forward to supporting efforts across Rutgers to strengthen our commitment to diversity and inclusion as we pursue our highest ambitions for the University.

Sincerely,

Robert Barchi