By SHANNON O. WELLS
While the Faculty Affairs committee supports including work on diversity, equity, and inclusion and community-engaged scholarship in promotion and tenure processes, some members are questioning whether the work in these areas is required or not of faculty members.
At the committee meeting on March 12, pro-tem member Seth Weinberg, professor in the School of Dental Medicine, noted that the policy recommendations from the Provost’s Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Community-Engaged Scholarship in Promotion & Tenure Processes — which Faculty Assembly approved 18 months ago and the Union of Pitt Faculty and the administration signed off on more recently — are not in alignment with interim Provost Joe McCarthy’s memo on the subject from Oct 30, 2023. This lack of clarity, he said, could lead to implementation problems.
The language in the ad hoc committee’s report says, “advancing DEI should be considered as an integral part of every faculty member’s accomplishments as they support the University’s mission.” McCarthy’s memo to deans said, “This is not an effort to require that your faculty engage in CES or DEI work, but to properly recognize it, where it exists.”
While noting that McCarthy’s memo is “well written,” Weinberg said the “problem is this lack of clarity around requirements. And I feel like that’s captured very clearly in (the provost’s) memo, but it’s not reflected anywhere in the actual policies. There’s a plain reading of this policy, I think (where) most people would assume that this is now a requirement for their faculty to engage in DEI work … to be considered for promotion.
In recognizing Weinberg’s point, committee Co-Chair Frank Jenkins said he thought Faculty Affairs was being asked for support in implementing the policy “or working with them to encourage that it’s properly done. But if it’s simply mandatory, then, now I’m questioning myself (as to) what role they want us to take on this.”
Jenkins said Lu-in Wang, vice provost for faculty affairs, and John Wallace, vice provost for faculty diversity and development, had been invited to the March 12 but had to reschedule for the next committee meeting on April 9.
In January 2022, former Provost Ann Cudd charged an ad hoc committee led by Wallace to address DEI and CES in promotion and tenure. The committee included representatives from each of Pitt’s schools, a regional campus, the University Library System and several administrative offices.
Separate subcommittees on DEI and CES drafted the two recommendations endorsed by Senate committees, including Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Discrimination Advocacy and Faculty Affairs, Faculty Assembly, as well as the Council of Deans.
In his memo, McCarthy — who is set to become Pitt’s new provost with approval from the Board of Trustees — directed that deans and presidents use their governance processes to revise key documents to acknowledge faculty members’ efforts in both CES and DEI work, “in teaching, scholarship, or service, such as promotion and tenure guidelines, annual review documents and CV templates.”
Rather than an effort to require that faculty engage in CES or DEI work, “but to properly recognize it, where it exists,” McCarthy said, “the two recommendations are well-considered and can serve as resources for your schools and campuses as you evaluate the efforts of faculty who engage in these academically important pursuits.”
Weinberg said the policy should be amended “for the sake of transparency and clarity,” noting that a mandate for DEI- and CES-oriented activity could potentially put faculty “on the receiving side of some very negative public criticism.
“Certainly, this kind of thing will come up in state legislature debates about our appropriation and other things,” he added. “I can’t imagine you’d have any doubt about that. So saying something in there that’s very clear and plain (and) as clear as what (Provost McCarthy) wrote in his memo, I think would really help, and it’s such a simple addition.”
Jenkins said he would pass along the request to the DEI/CES policy committee.
Tom Songer, co-chair of the Faculty Affairs committee and assistant professor in the School of Public Health, said, “I think we need to just identify how they’re going to monitor implementation across the different units. … We can offer insight into that as committee, but I don’t think we as a committee should be setting the pathway of how they should do that.”
Jenkins concurred, saying his question to the DEI/CES committee was what role they saw Faculty Affairs “having to help them with this, because that’s the way I think it was presented to me. It was just how I read it. And that’s what I wanted to hear from them is (clarifying) what role can we play? What role do they envision us in playing in either monitoring or implementation?”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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