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    Faculty Diversity Reported Weak


    Over the quarter-century between 1975 and 2000, women have increased from 8.4 percent to 25.5 percent of total faculty members at UCSB. Minority group members, on the other hand, have risen during this period from 7.6 percent to 17.6 percent, according to a report to the Academic Senate by its Committee on Affirmative Action and Diversity.
    Analyzing data compiled by the campus Affirmative Action Office, the committee under Chair Cynthia Hudley, professor of education, concluded that, while there are problems with some of the data, minority hiring has "stagnated or declined in the past 15 years" and "most departments…remain below the estimated availability pool for women and minorities." The report also noted that in the five years since SP-1 and Proposition 209 ended state agencies' affirmative action, all minority faculty numbers have remained the same or declined, including those of Asian Americans.
    The full report and data tables are available on the Academic Senate Web site <www.senate.ucsb.edu> under "Current Topics."
    This pattern of flat or decreasing women and minority hires "is a bit disturbing," said Allan Stewart-Oaten, current committee chair. "It was new to me."
    Though not on the committee when the report was written, Stewart-Oaten, a professor in ecology, evolution, and marine biology, suggested that labor availability plays a major role in weighing such numbers, and that pool can be hard to define. A flaw, he said, is relying on the annual number of Ph.D.s granted in a discipline to determine the fractions of groups available for new faculty hires.