When speaking about recruitment, a question of strategy usually arises: Should Penn aim to attract established star scholars and "public intellectuals," or should the University try to attract emerging scholars, with the intention of developing their talents?
Many agree that a combination of the two is most effective.
Public intellectuals bring visibility that often generates additional funding and attracts younger minority faculty. Yet, due to the constant competition among universities for these several dozen scholars, there is a tendency for star professors to move around quite a bit, making it difficult to build a sense of an academic community on campus.
A sound recruiting strategy, according to History professor Robert Engs, would focus primarily on emerging scholars, who are either recent graduates or assistant professors.
Otherwise it will continue to be a zero-sum competition, in which the top institutions attempt to outbid each other for top scholars.
"It's good to have these kind of public intellectuals at our institutions, but the way that a black faculty sustains itself ... is by having a strong core faculty in the different departments that go through the ranks, and who understand how the university works and who can participate widely in university governance," Engs said. "And I think that is slowly beginning to happen."
Students find merit in both approaches.
College senior Tamar Sinclair said that well-known scholars -- such as Afro-American Studies and Religious Studies professor Michael Eric Dyson -- often generate broader interest in minority issues through their visibility. On the other hand, she added, hiring rising scholars allows for fresh perspectives.
This strategic dilemma extends to other minority communities as well.
Either strategy would work to improve the Latino representation among faculty on campus, History professor and director of Latin American and Latino Studies Ann Farnsworth-Alvear said.
"If you take the assistant professor strategy, it has to be more than a couple, because Penn doesn't retain all of its faculty," she said, adding that the alternative could also be successful if pursued well.
"But that said, we haven't really committed to either strategy."
