Cornell FIRST Administration Core

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Project Summary (Administrative Core) The Administrative Core for the Cornell FIRST program will support the hiring and retention of 10 new assistant professors from groups underrepresented in their fields, while transforming institutional climate into a culture of inclusive excellence. The strength of Cornell’s program is its foundational roots as a complex private institution with a public mission, with its founding based on support for diversity, a culture of interdisciplinary research, and a track record of catalyzing change at different scales that were institutionalized. Given Cornell’s success in establishing programs for the effective development and support of early-career faculty, particularly those underrepresented in their fields, Cornell is in an excellent position to test the hypothesis that FIRST Cohort faculty will be successful in an environment that supports advocacy through sponsorship, consistent and individual-centered mentoring, and evidence-based professional development. We further hypothesize that Cornell’s institutional culture and scientific excellence will be enhanced with the hiring of a FIRST Cohort of diverse faculty. Cornell’s FIRST program features interdisciplinary hiring of faculty underrepresented in their fields, across six colleges and 20 departments, with a focus on retention, career development, and evaluation. The Administrative Core of the Cornell FIRST program will develop an inclusive FIRST Cohort search process that will lead to 10 hires in 3 clusters encompassing quantitative biomedical sciences, infection biology and health equity; hire and retain a diverse FIRST cohort of new faculty taking advantage of Cornell’s existing interdisciplinary field system approach where faculty are organized by research interest rather than by department; and will foster sustainable institutional culture change to support FIRST Cohort faculty to enhance their development, retention, progression, and promotion. Here, Cornell will accelerate its Belonging at Cornell framework for developing a culture of Inclusive Excellence, using a combination of institutional policies that impact hiring, mentoring, promotion and tenure, salary equity, and other initiatives aimed at enhancing compositional diversity, retention, and success of our faculty. We expect that the Cornell FIRST program will successfully hire, retain, and support 10 new faculty underrepresented in their fields, while fostering sustainable institutional culture change. These activities will result in increased diversity of the faculty in the biological, biomedical, and health sciences at Cornell, while contributing to the diversity of academy, and future generations of the STEM workforce.