The Treatment and Use of Best Practices for Diversity in Position Announcements for New Presidents
- PDF / 199,322 Bytes
- 14 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 60 Downloads / 138 Views
The Treatment and Use of Best Practices for Diversity in Position Announcements for New Presidents Jeffery L. Wilson & Katrina A. Meyer
Published online: 12 July 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
Abstract This study investigated how well institutions were communicating their commitment to diversity within position announcements for presidential openings and whether or not this communication reflected best practices in forwarding the diversity agenda for institutions. The sample included 70 institutions that advertised for a new campus president in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Using documents pertaining to the search, we applied content analysis to position announcements and campus websites dealing with presidential searches and diversity. Evidence indicated that within our sample only 13 (19 %) of institutions stated directly that they were looking for a diverse applicant pool and that only 28 (40 %) of the announcements mentioned diversity. Keywords Higher Education Institutions . Presidents . Diversity Are higher education institutions and the boards that govern them implementing the best practices for finding and hiring presidents who are both capable and represent the diversity in the general population and student body? This research evaluated presidential search materials in order to assess the use of practices that have been recommended to enable diverse candidates to be fairly considered for these high-level positions. Achieving greater diversity among presidents and senior leaders of institutions is essential for many reasons, but perhaps the most poignant is the disconnection between the Jeffery L. Wilson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Leadership at the University of Memphis. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in Higher Education Leadership. His research interests focus on diversity, leadership, and multicultural education. He can be reached at [email protected]. Katrina A. Meyer is Associate Professor in the Department of Leadership at the University of Memphis. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington. Her research interests include online learning and technology. She can be contacted at [email protected]. J. L. Wilson (*) Department of Leadership, University of Memphis, 313 Browning Hall, Memphis, TN 38152-3340, USA e-mail: [email protected] K. A. Meyer Department of Leadership, University of Memphis, 310 Browning Hall, Memphis, TN 38152-3340, USA
92
Innov High Educ (2013) 38:91–104
growing enrollment of minority students and the modest representation of minorities among senior leaders. For example, in 2009, educational attainment of a bachelor’s degree among Blacks and Hispanics in the U.S. was 12.7 % and 9.6 %, respectively (Chronicle of Higher Education [Chronicle] 2010a). The proportion of Blacks and Hispanics attending college has grown during the decade of 1998 to 2008 by 127 % and 124 %, respectively, at private fouryear colleges and 51 % and 68 % at public two-year colleges (Chronicle 2010b). However, the
Data Loading...
