UT System to require interviews with minority candidates

Asserting that the faculty and leadership in the University of Texas System doesn’t match the make-up of the students, Chancellor Bill McRaven said Thursday that he will require that a woman or minority candidate be interviewed for every high-level position at its 14 universities and medical schools.

The requirement will be similar to the National Football League’s Rooney Rule, which mandates that a minority head coaching candidate be interviewed before a final hire is made. It’s not required that a minority or woman be selected, but one must at least be strongly considered.

McRaven said the rule will pertain to all hires at the dean level or higher. It will be encouraged, but not required, for professors or other mid-level jobs.

“We need to have our faculty reflect more of our student population,” he said. ” We want to make sure that the students can look up to faculty members of the same ethnicity and say, ‘This is who I want to be.'”

McRaven designed the rule to ensure that women and minorities will be strongly considered. One can’t just be interviewed early in the process and then dropped. A woman or minority will have to be considered all the way until the last round of the process. McRaven said he will also require each school to submit a report to him detailing how it plans to close the gender gap.

The NFL has had a similar rule since 2003. The idea is to force people making hiring decisions to seek out talented minority or woman candidates, and to give those candidates a chance they might not have otherwise received.

“This will begin to move the needle,” McRaven said, “but if we don’t start now, then 20, 30 years from now we won’t look much different.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at http://www.texastribune.org/2015/11/05/push-diversity-ut-system-require-interview-minorit/