7.2 Diversity Requirements

The Office for Institutional Equity and Compliance will review the potential candidate pool and interview recommendations for every executive, administrative, faculty, and professional staff search. The review will be conducted either in advance of telephone/video conference interviews or in advance of on-campus interviews. Search committees and hiring units utilizing telephone/video conference interviews in the selection process must initiate a request to conduct interviews in advance of scheduling the telephone/ video conference interviews. Search committees and hiring units who do not utilize telephone/ video conference interviews, but intend on proceeding directly to on-campus interviews, must initiate a request to conduct interviews in advance of scheduling on-campus interviews.

For national searches, if the pool of potential candidates presented for interviews (via telephone, video conference or on-campus, as outlined above) is not broadly diverse, including candidates who are ethnically and/or racially diverse, the Office for Institutional Equity and Compliance will not approve interviews.

In such an event, the search committee and hiring unit are required to do additional outreach to broaden the applicant pool and provide an opportunity to broaden the potential candidate pool. If additional outreach is required, no candidate shall be removed from the interview list as a result of actions taken by the Office for Institutional Equity and Compliance. Upon completion of such additional outreach efforts, the potential candidate pool must again be submitted to the Office for Institutional Equity and Compliance for review and approval. If at that time, the interview list is still not racially and/or ethnically diverse, the Office for Institutional Equity and Compliance will approve interviews if it determines that reasonable and timely efforts have been made to increase the diversity of the applicant pool and that further efforts would likely be fruitless. Interviews cannot be scheduled until approved by the Office for Institutional Equity and Compliance. The final decision on hiring will be based solely on the applicant’s qualifications and not on his/her personal characteristics.