ADVANCING FACULTY DIVERSITY

The Advancing Faculty Diversity (AFD) program is the University of California’s primary research and development engine for transforming the professoriate of the future. Since 2016, AFD has awarded competitive grants to faculty project leads on all ten campuses in two priority areas: recruitment, improving climate & retention. Building on organizational change research, these projects have contributed to the recruitment of diverse scholars, enhanced faculty commitment to diversity and promoted an equitable academic culture for all faculty.

We are pleased to announce this year’s Request for Proposals (RFP) process for the 2024-2025 Advancing Faculty Diversity (AFD) program. The program is going into its ninth year and for this year’s competition there will be over $2.5 million available for awards.

All proposals are due no later than Monday, June 10, 2024.

  • The Recruitment Program (RFP) which supports projects that develop a set of coordinated interventions to recruit new ladder-rank faculty with an emphasis on identifying candidates who have the capacity to enhance contributions to diversity in their research, teaching, service, and outreach. 
  • The Improved Climate and Retention Program (RFP) supports projects with a variety of innovative approaches to improve campus climate and retention for faculty members, with a focus on those from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Additionally, the program supports projects that include a research-informed framework of academic climate and faculty retention as applied to the UC context, a plan for data collection and/or empirical tests of the framework within the UC system, implications for diversity, equity, and inclusion practices within the UC system, and potential avenues for generalization and peer reviewed publication.

UCOP will host two pre-award online forums for those interested in developing a project proposal. These online forums will be held on

  • Tuesday, April 23, 2024 from 4:00-5:00 pm
  • Wednesday, April 24, 2024 from 10:00-11:00 am
Each forum will cover the same information. These forums will be an opportunity for UCOP to address questions from potential applicants and to bring possible collaborators together. Attendance is not required to submit a proposal but confirmation of attendance is requested.

Those wishing to attend should fill out this RSVP form indicating which session they plan to attend. Note that the same content will be delivered at each forum.