By Michelle Loria Alvarado
Contributor
Despite diversity growth in the undergraduate student body, the faculty at Trevecca are still mostly white.
In the last 10 years, Trevecca’s student body demographic makeup has shifted. This year around 53% of undergraduate students reported being white. Around 87% of Trevecca faculty members are white.
Trevecca administrators said students being able to learn from faculty from different backgrounds is important and minority students seeing their race and culture represented is also important.
“The faculty, if you look at the research and the data, they are the most influential on the impact of a student’s development. So I do think it’s very important for us to have minority representation to reflect the student body,” said Thomas Middendorf, university provost and vice president of Trevecca.
Middendorf said there are strategic efforts underway to recruit more diverse faculty members and that it’s paying off. Of the six new faculty members hired for next fall, three of them are minorities, he said. While Middendorf is pleased with the results of some strategic efforts to increase diversity among faculty members, he said it will take more time.
“We have employees that have worked for the institution for years that are actually really good professors. And we’re not going to say, ‘Hey, really good professor that’s been effective at your job, we need you to move aside and we’re going to hire a minority population to take your place,’” said Middendorf.
Faculty turnover is low at Trevecca, so there are few opportunities to hire new faculty.
“For us to add a minority population into this, it’s going to take longer for us because the percentage of turnover is so small,” said Middendorf.
Despite the amount of time it takes to build a more diverse faculty, Trevecca has implemented some strategies to direct hiring.
“One of the practices we have now that we’re going to do annually is asking, ‘Who do we serve?’ We’re going to take a look at demographic data for who we serve at the institution, and that’s going to drive a lot of the decisions that we make because we do want to reflect our students in that way,” said Middendorf
Another implementation in the hiring process is the inclusion of Terrence Schofield, ASC provost for mission excellence and reconciliation at Trevecca, in the hiring process.
He has been meeting with search committees to discuss best practices for increasing diversity in the candidate pool.
