Thriving and UCI: Interventions to Support Leadership, Scholarship and Service Equity for Underrepresented Faculty

UC Irvine, 2020-2021

Project Principal Investigator

Ilona Yim and Nina Bandelj

Project Abstract

How do we retain our underrepresented faculty and help them thrive? Informed by positive organizations scholarship and evidence-based research on faculty retention, the PIs designed three interventions. First, Supporting Leadership establishes a Diversity Leadership Council with senior Diversity Professors serving as mentors/coaches to underrepresented faculty on campus and offers a faculty development program modeled after the UC Women’s Initiative for URM women faculty (a group most disproportionately represented among faculty resignations from UCI). Second, Supporting Scholarship creates a writing community based on the U See I Write initiative that provides training and dedicated space for regular research writing time and forges across group connections and allyship. Third, Supporting Service Equity takes inventory of visible and invisible service activities to develop and implement a service matrix aimed to improve transparency, accountability and credit for service contributions. All proposed interventions include data collection and efficacy evaluation and they scale to other UC campuses.

Project Link: 

U SEE I WRITE Faculty Writing Initiatives – Academic Personnel (uci.edu)
Inclusive Excellence Professors – Academic Personnel (uci.edu)

Scholarship Publication: 

Yim IS, Bandelj N, Razorenova OV, and Wang P (in press). Writing communities to (re-) engage faculty: The U See I Write initiative. To Improve the Academy.

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