The Black Faculty Cohort Hiring Initiative (BFCH) will recruit up to 23 Black scholars across seven faculties and schools over the next 4 years.
The initiative “aims to increase representation of Black faculty across the spectrum of UBC’s teaching and scholarship activities,” according to their website.
Conceived at the recommendation of the Scarborough Charter — to which UBC pledged in 2020 — and the 2022 UBC Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence (ARIE) Task Force report, the Black Faculty Cohort Hiring Initiative marks a first step in what its website called a series of interrelated initiatives to promote and sustain Black excellence.”
The specific positions available to prospective hires under this new initiative range broadly both within and across faculties and include tenure-track positions. The six positions available within the Faculty of Arts, for instance, deal specifically with subjects of Black identity and culture, but positions in the other faculties call for Black candidates with expertise in domains where Black voices have be historically underrepresented.
Associate VP Equity & Inclusion Dr. Arig al Shaibah said the whole institution will see the value of this initiative, not only the new Black faculty who will join the campus community.
“The more we diversify our professoriate, the more we broaden and deepen the impact of the knowledges we create and disseminate through research [and the] curriculum," she said in an interview with The Ubyssey.
She also said the methods employed by the BFCH Initiative were recommended by the Task Force.
“[The report] suggested these kinds of cohort hiring initiatives as best practice, because [they] have the potential to draw large numbers of excellent candidates,” explained al Shaibah.
The report recommends concerted professional development and faculty retention efforts including “leadership courses” and “fostering professional practice-specific networks of Black staff across multiple institutions.”
al Shaibah noted these post-hiring measures are beyond the scope of the BFCH initiative, but that “some schools of thought have been working on mentorship programs … making sure that historically underrepresented faculty have the opportunities to advance into leadership if they so choose.”
According to al Shaibah, the hiring initiative’s drafting process was conducted in tandem with the existing network of Black faculty already present at UBC. Alongside the Provost and Vice Provost’s Offices, al Shaibah was able to model the project on similar ones undertaken at other universities, but tailor it the reality at UBC.