The University will begin its search for a new Chief Diversity Officer in the coming months, Interim University President Lisa Lynch announced in a Feb. 24 email to the community. The email also included various other diversity and inclusion policy changes that have occurred in the months following the Ford Hall 2015 sit-in.  

“Although there is still much to accomplish and our journey is ongoing, I would like to share with you some of the progress made thus far. Over the coming months, we will provide additional updates about this important work as our efforts continue,” Lynch wrote in her email. 

In her email, Lynch noted that the University will soon launch its search for a Chief Diversity Officer and that Interim Provost Irving Epstein will lead the search committee. In an email to the Justice, Epstein wrote that while no committee members have been chosen yet, the committee will work with the search firm Witt/Kieffer to identify possible candidates in the coming months. 

The chief diversity officer position, he noted, will involve “coordinating, implementing and helping to shape the university’s plan for diversity and inclusion ... providing guidance for and having input into decisions about recruitment of faculty, staff and students; and strengthening access to all of our facilities for all of our community members.”

The search committee, Epstein added, will be comprised of four faculty members, four staff members, two undergraduate students, two graduate students and one trustee. In terms of search criteria, he added, the committee will likely be looking for a “deep commitment to diversity and inclusion, relevant experience, understanding of Brandeis’s culture and mission, people skills, strength in management, leadership, innovation, collaboration and communication.” 

He also wrote that the search will be conducted on a national scale and that Witt/Kieffer will do the initial screening of candidates. The search committee will then look at the candidates’ files and reduce the pool from 15 to 20 individuals to six to eight individuals. “We expect to receive a large number of applications — dozens, perhaps hundreds,” Epstein wrote. “The search committee will then read the most promising applications.”  He added that the search committee members “will have the opportunity to look at all the files, but this may not be feasible if we get hundreds of applications.”

Once the pool of candidates is narrowed down, Epstein wrote, “We will then have an initial interview with the individuals on this shortlist, with a goal of identifying the 3 or 4 most promising candidates.  These finalists will be invited to campus to meet both with the committee and with groups of interested faculty, students and staff.” 

Once all the information on the position and the candidates is available, he concluded, the committee will make a suggestion — “not a ranking, but rather a detailed list of strengths and weaknesses” — to the president, who will then make the final choice after meeting with all the candidates.

Among the other updates, Lynch noted that the University will focus on improving faculty recruitment and retention and improving student recruitment. She wrote that the administration is in the process of finalizing a plan to appoint staff members whose focus is on diversity and inclusion and provide them with a stipend for their work. In terms of student recruitment, Lynch wrote that undergraduate applications have increased 8.2 percent this academic year, with a 14.8 percent increase in African-American applicants and an 18 percent increase in “Latino/Hispanic” applicants. “Although the yield on admitted applicants remains a challenge, the university is dedicated to improving it. In the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, a new pilot program based on the Posse model will offer a full-tuition scholarship and a $10,000 stipend to as many as five students a year,” she wrote. 

Additionally, she noted, three members from Academic Services — Erika Smith, Elena Lewis and Brian Koslowski — received professional training from the International Ombudsman Association and will serve as ombudsmen throughout the spring semester, allowing students to talk to them “in confidence about any campus-related concern.” All three declined to comment at press time.

Other updates include the announcement that a campus climate survey on diversity and inclusion will be released to students later in the spring, and a mention of the University’s attempts to further involve alumni, especially from the Alumni of Color group. Lynch noted that the University is already working on the latter, with a visit from Margo Jefferson ’68, author of “Negroland: A Memoir,” scheduled for Thursday.