The University of Vermont’s faculty and staff are barely more diverse than they were five years ago, new data shows, highlighting the university’s longstanding struggle to diversify its workforce.
Annual data released by the university’s Office of Institutional Research shows that, as of the fall semester of 2021, 13.4% of the university’s faculty and staff are people of color, while 81.8% are white. The remaining 4.8% are classified as either “unknown” or “international.”
That’s just 0.3 percentage points higher than last year, when a reported 13.1% of the university’s employees were people of color. And it’s a gain of only 1.1 percentage points since 2017, when people of color made up 12.3% of the university’s workforce.
The data highlights the challenge of attracting — and keeping — diverse employees in largely white Vermont.
Enrique Corredera, a UVM spokesperson, noted the slight uptick in the university’s employee diversity.
As a fraction of UVM’s workforce, little has changed about employees of color. But, Corredera pointed out, the university has increased the number of faculty of color by roughly 11% — from 191 to 212 — since 2017.
Over the same period, he noted, the number of nonfaculty staff of color has grown from 314 to 351, a roughly 12% increase.
UVM has “had some success with our recruitment efforts,” Corredera said in an email.
But the university still lags behind the national average. As of fall 2019, people of color made up roughly 29% of all college and university employees across the country, according to federal data. That’s more than twice UVM’s percentage.
Amer Ahmed, UVM’s vice provost for diversity, equity and inclusion, said in an interview that the state of Vermont poses unique challenges for attracting and retaining a diverse workforce.
The housing shortage and high cost of living are significant obstacles, he said. And in predominantly white Vermont, he said, there is a “need for a greater sense of community” for some people of color.
“Retention is very complicated,” he said. “People move for very different reasons, depending on who they are.”
The new data comes more than a year after professors raised concerns about “troubling” losses of faculty of color.
In an August 2020 letter to administrators, a group of 42 faculty called on the university’s administration to attract and retain more diverse professors, citing the recent departures of over a dozen faculty members of color.
“We are, indeed, at a crisis point,” the letter read. “At the very least, the largest higher ed institution in the predominantly white state of Vermont should commit to recruit AND retain faculty of color in order to attract a more diverse student body and offer a richer educational and intellectual experience for all.”
Pablo Bose, a professor in the geography department who signed last year’s letter, said he and other faculty members of color have raised concerns about the university’s lack of diversity for years.
“That’s been here since I got here, and that’s been an ongoing issue,” Bose said.
But he declined to place the blame fully on the administration. Many of the recent departures of faculty members of color, he said, happened simply because professors got better offers at other, better-resourced institutions.
“As an employer, it’s hard for a place like UVM,” Bose said. “Like, what do you do if somebody offers to double someone’s salary, or presents a better opportunity?”
Ahmed outlined a series of steps that UVM is taking to improve its diversity. The university’s office of diversity, equity and inclusion is working on a “cultural resource guide” that will help connect faculty and staff to local institutions that cater to diverse residents, such as nonprofits, houses of worship and grocery stores.
Officials are also working on a five-year plan to improve diversity across the university, Ahmed said, based partially on the data being collected by the university.
“I would argue that there’s elements of how we’re proceeding — particularly the data-driven component of it — that’s unprecedented at UVM,” Ahmed said. “So that’s what we hope will be different about this next five-year implementation phase.”
The UVM Faculty Senate is also pushing for more inclusive practices. Earlier this year, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution calling on the administration to improve its hiring and retention practices. And a month ago, the Faculty Senate formed a committee to examine better ways to attract and retain diverse candidates.
In an interview, UVM Faculty Senate President Thomas Borchert said he hopes the committee will make recommendations in the spring.
The new data is “disappointing,” he said, but he admitted that there are factors at play outside of the administration’s control.
“It’s unclear to me how much of it is about the UVM administration, how much of it is about the challenge of being a person of color in Vermont,” Borchert said.
But, he said, “I’m not trying to give the university or the university’s administration a pass.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed a comment to Amer Ahmed.
