4.4 Additional Recruitment and Outreach Recommendations for Search Committees

Encourage faculty and staff who will be attending professional conferences or who will be delivering papers at other universities to combine their visits with recruitment efforts for present and future positions. They should be encouraged to solicit curricula vitae from promising applicants.

Make contact with diverse professionals and scholars who have received professional recognition or whose work or contributions you admire and encourage them to apply, as well as to ask for the names of other promising candidates who the University could contact about the position.

Establish a working relationship with departments and units at institutions with substantial numbers of women and ethnically or racially diverse scholars and students. This will allow a host of mutually beneficial activities to be undertaken, such as a sharing of research facilities and exchanges of faculty and staff. Teaching for a semester, delivering a paper, or simply making an informal visit will allow Missouri State University faculty to discuss job openings with the staff and students at these institutions.

Request the names of potential candidates from relevant professional or academic associations and organizations with caucuses and special interest groups focused on diversity issues.

Keep national higher education associations informed of present and possible future positions. Several such associations contain special interest groups (e.g., the American Educational Research Association has Hispanic and Black caucuses).

Maintain ongoing contact with professional organizations, associations, and agencies that have job referral services.

Maintain close contact with diverse graduates of Missouri State University.

Contact women and ethnically and/or racially diverse professionals and scholars who have received significant grants or professional recognition, and ask for the names of other promising professionals and scholars who they might recommend.

Invite diverse scholars from other institutions to participate in department-sponsored symposia and visiting professorships. A one-year visiting professorship to replace a faculty member who is on leave will not only help a department in meeting its instructional responsibilities but will also strengthen the link between the department at Missouri State University and a similar department at another institution.

Request nominations. When requesting that a person or organization nominate potential candidates, it is important to always stress the University’s commitment to diversity and the special efforts it has undertaken to that end.