President's Faculty Diversity Cluster Hiring Initiative

January 28, 2008

Members of the Rutgers Community:

Diversity is one of our core values at Rutgers. While our student body is wonderfully diverse, our faculty is less so. In order to be as great a university as we can be, we must work to further diversify our faculty so that we can achieve the excellence and intellectual depth and richness that such diversification brings.

Therefore, I am pleased to announce the President's Faculty Diversity Cluster Hiring Initiative. Each academic year, for at least the next five years, I will invite proposals from deans and provosts for Faculty Diversity Cluster Hires—groups of three, four, or even five faculty of the highest quality who would come to Rutgers as a group or "cluster," and whose addition to our faculty ranks would strategically and significantly increase the diversification of our scholarship and pedagogy. Such hires might be all in one department or, more likely, would cross departmental or even school or campus lines. Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary proposals would receive particular consideration. The Office of the President will provide half the salary of each faculty member in the cluster for their first three years at Rutgers.

This new President's Faculty Diversity Cluster Hiring Initiative is an additional program that supplements the gains in this area we have already achieved through individual faculty and postdoctoral hires supported by the Office of Faculty Diversity Initiatives. The Office of Faculty Diversity Initiatives will continue to entertain requests from deans and provosts for partial salary support for tenured and tenure-track faculty hires, as well as for one- to two-year postdoctoral appointments, for scholars of excellence whose presence at Rutgers will increase the diversity of the department, unit, campus, or curriculum.

Further information regarding program criteria and application guidelines will be sent to deans and provosts shortly. Should you have any questions regarding this exciting new program in the meantime, please feel free to contact Dr. Karen Stubaus or 732-932-4889.

Richard L. McCormick
President
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey