Revolutionizing academic hiring: a faculty cluster hire emphasizing teamwork.

Area of Science:

• Academic hiring practices
• Collaborative research
• Gender bias in science

Background:

• Traditional academic hiring often overlooks teamwork and collaboration.
• Existing recruitment processes may perpetuate gender bias.
• The Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) sought to address these limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and implement a faculty cluster hiring initiative focused on collaboration.
• To create an academic search process that evaluates and rewards teamwork.
• To mitigate gender bias inherent in conventional academic recruitment.

Main Methods:

• Execution of a faculty cluster hiring initiative.
• Invention of a novel hiring process emphasizing collaborative potential.
• Implementation of strategies to reduce gender bias during the search.

Main Results:

• Successful recruitment of scientists driven by collaboration.
• Establishment of a hiring process that evaluates teamwork.
• Demonstrated reduction in gender bias compared to typical academic searches.

Conclusions:

• The developed hiring initiative effectively identifies and recruits collaborative scientists.
• The novel process provides a model for evaluating teamwork in academia.
• BTI's approach offers a successful strategy for reducing gender bias in faculty hiring.