New Report by the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute Explores Dual-Career Academic Hiring for Faculty Diversity

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Brandy Jones
Telephone: 848-932-0788
Email: brandy.jones@gse.rutgers.edu

New Brunswick, NJ. August 12, 2020— The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, and Justice (Proctor Institute) is proud to announce the release of a new report that discusses the implications of dual-career hiring for the professoriate and shares findings from a study that explored the recruitment and career experiences of faculty couples.

The report, "Dual-Career Hiring for Faculty Diversity: Insights from Diverse Academic Couples," contextualizes the topic by pointing to the increased pressure that institutions are under to diversify the racial/ethnic representation of their faculties, which has coincided with “the emergence of the dual-career academic couple as a force within the academic labor market” due to an increase in women’s participation in academia (p. 1).

The report engages literature on dual-career academic hiring and how it relates to faculty diversity, and highlights findings from a qualitative study with 11 diverse academic couples in which both partners attained faculty positions at the same university through dual-career hiring processes. 

The report emphasizes the humanity of faculty. Faculty have personal lives, and institutions should take this into consideration when developing and refining their policies. A participant in the study shared, “people think of faculty members as just being in the classroom, but our personal lives and our intimate lives impact so much of what our potential is, what we can do, and what the possibilities are” (p. 9). 

"Dual-career hiring is cited as a strategy for increasing faculty diversity, but past research has not centered the perspectives of academic couples from underrepresented backgrounds," noted the report's author, Daniel Blake, who is a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and a Visiting Scholar at the Proctor Institute. "By amplifying their voices, this work equips institutions with strategies to make their policies and practices more inclusive." 

The study's participants shared their recruitment experiences, emphasizing their sensitivity to how both partners are treated during hiring processes, and their desire to be respected as individual scholars. Couples cited the key role administrators have played in affirming how each partner would fit and be able to contribute, and they noted that institutions with established dual-career hiring practices were able to make offers faster and gained a competitive edge in recruitment. 

Participants also drew attention to how a lack of responsiveness to dual-career needs has led them to transition to other institutions. Counter to beliefs about the immobility of faculty couples, four out of the eleven couples changed institutions, and eight have had dual-career hire offers. The report cautions institutions to not assume that academic couples are immobile and concludes that "the institutions that are most successful at recruiting and retaining faculty couples treat partners equitably and do not take for granted that they will remain" (pg. 9). 

"We often forget that faculty in academia have personal lives and relationships; hiring two qualified individuals who happen to be in a partnership together shouldn’t be looked down upon, rather it should be seen as an asset to the institution and its ability to retain the individuals,” shared Marybeth Gasman, Distinguished Professor, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair in Education, and the Executive Director for the Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, and Justice.

The report ends with recommendations for administrators, researchers, and academic couples, as well as an "Advice for Couples, By Couples" section, which includes words of wisdom shared by the study’s participants. For administrators, the report calls for the implementation of transparent dual-career hiring policies that include faculty colleagues in vetting processes, open dialogue about the implications of employing a couple within an academic unit, and mindfulness that couples are in the same family unit, among other suggestions. Recommendations for research include collecting institutional and national data to reveal the impact of dual-career hiring on faculty diversity and conducting studies that shed light on same-sex academic couples’ experiences navigating the faculty job market. Lastly, the report encourages couples to be proactive in establishing separate professional and scholarly identities and to connect with other academic couples, whose firsthand experience can prove beneficial as they navigate their careers. 

Full copies of the report are freely available on our site here.

About the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, and Justice 
The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, and Justice (Proctor Institute) is a national center that focuses on issues of leadership, equity, and justice within the context of higher education. It brings together researchers, practitioners and community members to work toward the common goals of diversifying leadership, enhancing equity, and fostering justice for all. The Proctor Institute is located at Rutgers University—New Brunswick, in the Graduate School of Education and houses the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions (CMSI). Learn more at https://proctor.gse.rutgers.edu.