The College of Arts and Sciences embraces UVM's commitment to both Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action as defined by applicable federal and state laws. As an Equal Opportunity employer, UVM is committed to giving applicants with substantially similar credentials and experience an equal opportunity of being hired irrespective of characteristics that federal and state government have determined may not enter into employment decisions, e.g., race, religion, national origin, gender, age, disability, etc. We take the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent legislation seriously; law must inform us. As an Affirmative Action employer, UVM is committed to increasing the representation of women and minorities in its workplace in the interest of creating an enriched intellectual community and as a matter of equity. President Lyndon Johnson's words also resonate: equal opportunity is a foundation, but true equality calls for more affirmative steps.
Our approach to the recruitment of diverse faculty and staff adheres to legally mandated Equal Opportunity requirements while pursuing appropriate strategies for enhancing the pool of job applicants to reflect better representation among groups recognized by UVM as targets of Affirmative Action efforts. Our goal is to have a faculty and staff that reflect the composition of the available workforce, appropriately measured.

Central to this effort is collaboration with managers, department chairs, search committees, the Office of Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity, the Chief Diversity Officer, and the Office of Human Resource Services to extend awareness and information about vacancies in the College to groups and communities where our representation is below workforce availability. It also involves the use of personal and professional networks to spread the word that UVM, Burlington, and Vermont are safe and congenial places for people to set down roots and thrive personally and professionally. Together, we look at the composition of our current workforce, identify gap areas, establish goals, design strategies, and monitor our effectiveness.

In addition, the College has provided financial and human resources to departments to implement effective recruitment plans that will insure diverse applicant pools and translate those into diverse interview pools and hiring outcomes. The job description for one of the CAS Associate Deans includes monitoring the College's effort in this regard. The Dean of the College accepts responsibility for implementing these efforts college-wide and is held accountable by the Provost and the President of UVM for achieving successful outcomes.

(What follows is a summary of the data we compiled. Detailed tables as well as a more extensive discussion of them can be found in our 2012 Report on Diversity.)

Starting with 2005 through academic year 2012-13, the College has made significant advances in the hiring of racially and ethnically-diverse minorities and women. With respect to gender, there have been slightly more women hired than men: 64 women, 63 men. Regarding race and ethnicity, minority faculty constituted 24% of all hires during this period.

The approximately 50/50 hiring of women and men is adequate in light of the breakdown of recent Ph.D.s by gender: 46.8% female and 53.2% male. The figure of 24% for minority hiring almost exactly matches the percent of doctoral degrees awarded to minority faculty in the most recently available National Science Foundation survey of all doctoral degrees annually awarded. This is also a positive achievement.

Where does CAS stand overall with respect to the racial and ethnic composition of our faculty? Our ultimate aim is to reach the percentages of women, and ethnic/racial minorities within the College that reflect "national workforce availability." The College has made progress toward this goal over the course of the last few years.

With respect to gender, CAS is doing very well indeed: 44.6% of our faculty members are women while 37.6% of persons with Ph.D.s in the United States are female. For race and ethnicity we have made progress, but more needs to be done: 18.8% of our faculty members are non-white while 24.5% of individuals with Ph.D.s in the country at large are minorities.

Since fall 2008, the College of Arts and Sciences has worked closely with departments to insure that support/administrative staff hiring, retention, and promotion accord with the College's commitment to diversity. To this end, College administrators as well as the Chief Diversity Office, and the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity work with departments to insure that position announcements reach a thorough cross-section of Burlington and the surrounding communities. CAS staff largely resemble the population in the Burlington area in terms of ethnic, racial, and gender characteristics. This is not surprising since we recruit largely from the local labor market. The one caveat is that we have a much higher percentage of women (61%) than are present in the population of the Burlington/Chittenden County area, but this is due to our occupational structure: 45% of our staff are clerical workers while 55% are professional/technical. If the entire U.S. had this occupational distribution, about 62% of the workers nationwide would be female, a number not very different from our figure of 61%.

In 2017, all units at UVM were asked to submit a catalog of diversity activities and an action plan for that unit. The action plans form a basis for evaluating units on their progress toward stated goals. The College of Arts and Sciences goals are consistent with our continued effort to provide a safe and supportive environment for all, lead in scholarship and teaching about these issues, and fosters the exchange of ideas. The College has developed an action plan for achieving inclusion excellence (PDF).

• UVM Office of Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity hiring guidelines
• UVM Office of Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity  hiring “best practices"
• UVM Board of Trustees’ statement—“Why Diversity”— on diversity as a strategic priority
• UVM Office of Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity
• UVM Center for Cultural Pluralism
• Diversity at UVM website
• Diversity Resources (Local)
• Diversity Resources (National)