The Minority Equity Committee met for the first time yesterday to begin its examination of the status of the University's minority faculty members.
The ten-member faculty committee -- charged by University President Judith Rodin and Provost Robert Barchi -- is modeled after last fall's Faculty Gender Equity Study. The results of that study were released in December.
The Gender Equity Committee, which has shaped the formation of the Minority Equity Study, was assembled in June 2000 by Barchi and Faculty Senate Chair Larry Gross. The committee looked into four components of the "status of women faculty" at Penn, including proportions of women within departments, salaries of female faculty and overall quality of life.
That committee's report affirmed that in some aspects, women at Penn are better off than they have ever been.
However, the numbers in the report also raised concerns for a few Penn employees. For some female faculty members, the report confirmed a longstanding feeling that male and female professors are not entirely on equal ground.
Over the course of the semester, the Minority Equity Committee will review minority representation at various levels of the faculty, specifically looking at whether minorities receive the same treatment as non-minority faculty in regard to salary, promotions and leadership positions.
"There was a tremendous amount of enthusiasm today about taking a look at the issues and trying to see what the status is and coming up with some recommendations of how we might improve things for minority faculty," Committee Chairman John Jemmott said.
Jemmott, who is also a professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, stressed that the study wasn't "stimulated by any specific concerns or complaints." Rather, the purpose of the committee is to generate data that will show if any disparity does exist in the treatment of minority versus non-minority faculty.
The committee aims to report its findings by this fall. The same types of questions that the Gender Equity Committee asked in its study will now be geared toward minority faculty members.
The study will examine how well Penn does in recruiting minority faculty, how well the University recruits in comparison to its peer schools and whether some departments at Penn do better in recruiting and retaining minority faculty than others.
"The committee is a direct reflection of the University and the administration's commitment to minority equity on campus, both in the recruitment and retention of our faculty and our commitment to the diversity of our student body as well," Barchi said.
"It is a major issue and has been a major thrust since President Rodin came to the University," he added.
The group will also investigate the salaries and quality of life for minority faculty at Penn. Quality of life indicates whether faculty members feel valued in and out of the classroom, believe they make a difference and a contribution to the Penn community and think that the University supports their research.
"The committee will both collect number-based data and also interview every minority faculty member at Penn or at least a broad sample," Rodin said. "Our goal is to be as creative as we can in being highly competitive in recruiting minority faculty. I think this committee will help us to achieve that."
Minority Equity Committee members said they hope that their study will bring the problems with the University's current treatment of minority faculty members to the forefront so that the administration can take action to make sure that Penn treats all of its faculty fairly.
"We're looking to see how we're doing," Barchi said. "It's an opportunity to assess our performance, to identify areas where we've been doing well, identify areas where we can do better and identify concrete steps we can take to improve."
