In an effort to advance the diversity among its faculty, the University of California San Diego is recruiting to hire up to 12 new faculty members from underrepresented demographics, it announced Thursday.
UCSD will use two grants that total $700,000 for its hiring effort. The university said that since its largest proportion of applicants in the University of California system are students of color, it is “critical that UC San Diego recruit more diverse faculty to better reflect the statewide population, and to foster an inclusive campus climate.”
The University of California Office of the President funded two initiatives at UCSD through the UC Advancing Faculty Diversity (AFD) grant program for the occasion. It gave the La Jolla university $500,000 in one-time funding to hire 10 to 12 faculty members whose research is focused on racial and ethnic disparities in STEM fields.
New hires selected in this project will be placed in the School of Medicine, Jacobs School of Engineering Division of Physical Sciences, Division of Biological Sciences, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the new Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute.
A second initiative that granted the school $200,000 in one-time funding will focus on improving the retention of underrepresented faculty. UCSD said it will offer coaching for faculty mentors and coalition building as a means to retain its faculty.
