Faculty Affairs and Academic Programs
Advancing Faculty Diversity Recruitment Proposal UCLA – Mentor Professor Program
UCLA, 2020-2021
Project Principal Investigators
Tracy Johnson, Life Sciences, UCLA College
Project Abstract
The UCLA Division of Life Sciences has experimented with a Mentor-Professor Program (MPP) for eight years to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion across its multiple departments covering biological and psychological disciplines. The MPP has been effective in its goal to recruit outstanding scientists with a history of mentoring under-represented groups (URGs) in the sciences and successful in enhancing UCLA’s faculty diversity. However, project PIs identified an important, unmet need to recruit senior scientists who have experience mentoring graduate students, post-docs, and early career scientists from URGs. The Division is conducting two high impact senior-level searches in 2020-21—one division-wide and one departmental within psychology. In addition to carefully assessing the parallel search processes, the project will analyze retrospectively the eight years of MPP experience to draw out lessons and design strategies. UCLA will produce a final report that consolidates all recommendations for UC campuses that seek to utilize mentor-professor recruitments.