Check Your Bias: Using Inclusive Selection Practices
By Jenna Carpenter, Dean and Professor of Engineering, Campbell University @jennapcarp; Betty Mayfield, Professor Emerita of Mathematics, Hood College; and Francis Su, Benediktsson-Karwa Professor of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College @mathyawp
Joint Mathematics Meetings 2020 Employment Center
Suppose you and some colleagues are choosing an invited lecturer for your Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Section meeting. Or you are helping to choose this year’s teaching award winner at your university. Or your department is hiring a new faculty member. You want to make sure that your process is as fair and inclusive as possible so that you choose the best person. The MAA has a guide for that!
“Guidelines for MAA Selection Committees: Avoiding Implicit Bias” was adopted by the MAA Board of Governors in 2012 and updated in 2018. Originally intended for MAA prize and award selection committees, it has wide applications to other decisions as well. Here we describe where the document came from and how it can be useful.
Background: The AWARDS Project
About ten years ago, we served on an MAA task force that participated in AWARDS (Advancing Ways of Awarding Recognition in Disciplinary Societies), a project coordinated by the Association for Women in Science and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project’s goal was “to investigate and improve the process of granting awards and prizes for scholarly achievement in academic disciplines.” During two interdisciplinary workshops, we examined typical practices of prize and awards committees, and we discussed ways in which such practices may unintentionally lead to a lack of diversity in award recipients. We learned about implicit bias — unconscious, unintentional assumptions that can sometimes influence our judgment. The Guidelines grew out of what we learned from those workshops. The idea was to create a simple, short handout that reminded people of best practices to avoid implicit bias. After this handout was approved by the Board of Governors in 2012, it was regularly distributed to MAA committees as a helpful reminder.
Best Practices: Recommendations for Selection Committees
The Guidelines describe these recommendations in detail:
Appoint diverse selection committees and committee chairs.
Generate a large and diverse pool of nominees. In particular, publicize the award or position among underrepresented groups.
Discuss the process and criteria that will be used to evaluate nominees before reviewing nominations.
Make a personal list of top nominees before hearing the recommendations of your colleagues.
Look for hidden gems. Pay special attention to suggestions from atypical sources.
Create shortlists via inclusive rather than exclusive methods.
Ensure that every committee member’s voice is heard.
Take adequate time to make a decision.
Avoid potential conflicts of interest.
How to Use the Guidelines
As noted above, these guidelines can be helpful in many situations. We will talk here about ways to use them when selecting invited lecturers, choosing award winners, and hiring new faculty.
When looking for invited lecturers, don’t limit considerations to speakers your colleagues may have heard at national venues. Who might be a hidden gem? A diverse selection committee is more likely to have broader personal networks. Whom do they know who might be a good or different choice? Who in their networks might have connections to underrepresented groups? Many times members want to select someone whom they have heard speak before to ensure they are an engaging speaker. Don’t overlook YouTube or other videos of potential speakers or recommendations from people who may have heard the candidate speak. If the committee is committed to generating a large list of potential speakers from various backgrounds, they are likely to be successful in doing so.
The selection of award winners was the focus of the original project, so the guidelines are a great fit. Before reviewing any applications, create a rubric for evaluation based on a list of criteria for the award. A more diverse selection committee will create a deeper pool of candidates and will value a broader range of experience and expertise. Ask members to use the rubric, with supporting evidence from the applications, when evaluating candidates.
As for faculty searches, there are many institutions that now use such guidelines to recruit, interview, and hire faculty from more diverse applicant pools. When creating the position ad, instead of including a laundry list of desired experience and expertise, state that you are looking for people interested in those items; this will allow more people to see themselves as described by the ad. If possible, make sure the search committee also includes a Diversity Advocate, a faculty member who has completed training on implicit bias and can help spot biased processes and behaviors and pivot to ones that are more inclusive. Another best practice is to have the entire search committee complete implicit bias training before they start the search process (for example, University of Washington professor Coleen Carrigan’s “Interrupting Bias Live Action Film” or the widely used Implicit Bias video series from Jerry Kang at the University of California, Los Angeles). Often, committees will generate their shortlist by reviewing the applications and looking for reasons to throw candidates off the list. Instead, start with an empty shortlist and look for reasons to add candidates to it. This inclusive practice will result in a more diverse pool of candidates.
You can undoubtedly think of many other situations in which the Guidelines may be helpful: choosing students to admit to a program or to receive scholarships, nominating candidates for office, suggesting new members for a college council. We encourage you to share these Guidelines with your colleagues. You may encounter skepticism about whether implicit bias exists. An important feature about the Guidelines is that they are good practices to implement even if one is not convinced that bias is a problem.
Making good, conscious decisions is hard enough, even if we all desire fairness and hope to make the best decisions possible. These Guidelines are a step towards not letting our unconscious biases get in the way.
Interested in additional resources that support inclusive searches? Check out these:
Women in Science & Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI)'s Searching for Excellence & Diversity workshops: https://wiseli.wisc.edu/workshops/hiring-diverse-excellent-faculty/ and guidebook: https://wiseli.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/662/2018/11/SearchBook_Wisc.pdf
Guide to Best Practices in Faculty Search and Hiring – Columbia University: https://provost.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/BestPracticesFacultySearchHiring.pdf
Handbook and Toolkit of Best Practices for Faculty Searches – University of Washington: https://www.washington.edu/diversity/faculty-advancement/handbook/
NSF Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) - Resources, videos, facilitator guides, including “Excellence and Diversity” video: https://www.btaa.org/leadership/pai/search-committees
Shelley Correll on Beyond Bias: Fair and Inclusive Hiring Strategies for University Search Committees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlBxyIZrQIQ
Big Ten Academic Alliance – Videos and Facilitator Guides: https://www.btaa.org/leadership/pai/search-committees/training-video-gateway