An enlightened search process can diversify administration.

If predominately white universities truly want to build and maintain a diverse administrative workforce, they'll have to change the way inclusion and exclusion play out for women and minorities in the search process.

"For the past three decades predominately white universities have claimed to pay attention to diversifying their administrative groups, but why is it then that hiring outcomes do not seem to bear that out?" asked Dr. Mary Ann Danowitz Sagaria, an associate professor of educational policy and leadership at The Ohio State University. Whites--specifically white men--still dominate executive, administrative and managerial campus jobs, she noted.

In a study published in the November/December 2002 issue of The Journal of Higher Education, Sagaria reported how administrator searches at her predominately white school put black and white women and black men at a disadvantage and limited the success of diversity goals.

Her study did what little other research had done: include multiple perspectives. "Most research focuses on the organizational process and search chairs' accounts and ignores the experiences of the candidates," said Sagaria in her study, which she discussed with WIHE.

Developing a filtering model

Sagaria studied The Ohio State University's search processes from 1989 and 1990. The study took so long to complete and publish partly because some of her interviews revealed illegalities during searches, she told WIHE. Additionally, the overall topic is delicate: "If it was not presented in a way I believed in, it would be dismissed outright.... I really had to believe every word. People don't like to read things that may be critical of their behavior."

Sagaria's research team interviewed 32 search chairs, and the successful and unsuccessful candidates for 13 administrative and professional positions. They were: 11 search chairs (nine white men and two white women); 15 successful candidates (three white men, four white women, four black men, and four black women); five unsuccessful candidates (two white men, two white women and one black woman).