Diversity: Faculty and other academic personnel
Advancing Diverse Faculty, Curricula and Research through a Cluster Hire at UC San Diego
UC San Diego, 2020-2021
Project Principal Investigators
Thandeka Chapman, Associate Professor, Education Studies
Ivan Evans, Professor, Sociology; Provost of Eleanor Roosevelt College
Makeba Jones, Associate Teaching Professor, Education Studies
Linda Awdishu, Professor of Clinical Pharmacy; Chair, Division of Clinical Pharmacy
Frances Contreras, Professor, Education Studies; AVC for Faculty Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Project Abstract
Leveraging its institutional strengths, student needs, and opportunities to diversify faculty, research and curriculum at the intersection of the social sciences and STEM, UC San Diego is conducting a multidisciplinary cluster hire of up to ten faculty whose research is focused on racial/ethnic disparities in health, medicine, and the environment. The new faculty will be located in the Physical Sciences, Biological Sciences, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and the new Wertheim School of Public Health, and would contribute a significant focus on African American communities and the Black Diaspora. The cluster would serve three purposes: 1) to increase faculty diversity; 2) to advance research on and for communities of color; and 3) to diversify curriculum in STEM affiliated with the DEI course requirement and African American Studies Minor. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic where we are witnessing social disparities translate into disparate health outcomes, this innovative proposal is both timely and globally relevant.