The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is committed to a diverse and inclusive campus. This commitment is the most effective means of fulfilling our mission: to provide the very best education to our students, to conduct research that remains on the cutting edge and to render the most beneficial and far-reaching service to this community and state. Success in all these areas depends largely on the depth and breadth of the talent, perspectives and backgrounds represented on this campus.

Louis Dale

Although UAB’s commitment to diversity and equality as a key means of fulfilling the university’s educational mission is long standing, I have appointed Dr. Louis Dale, vice president of Equity and Diversity, to oversee the continuation of UAB’s diversity efforts as well as the implementation of new diversity and equity initiatives. Some of the more noteworthy efforts include the following:

• Senior UAB administrators shall be responsible for providing the leadership to create meaningful progress in diversity.

• A continuing collegial dialogue with African-American faculty and staff to establish a five-year goal for African-American representation in the student body, faculty and EEO-1 level staff, not as legally or contractually enforceable quotas, but as a standard management technique for assessing effectiveness of ongoing  diversity initiatives.

• A commitment to continue to engage in strategic diversity initiatives that UAB deems appropriate in order to recruit, hire and retain African-American faculty and EEO-1 level administrators.

• A requirement that all search committees for tenured or tenure-track faculty, to the extent practicable and educationally sound, have African-American representation.

• An agreement to send announcements of faculty and EEO-1 administrator level position searches to the UAB African-American Faculty and/or  Staff Association with an invitation to identify possible recruits and for the next five years to provide the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) a list of faculty vacancies in the event that the SREB, if it so chooses, will notify graduates of the SREB Doctoral Studies Program of those vacancies.

• An agreement that, for the next five years, UAB will distribute annually the SREB doctoral scholars list provided by Alabama Commission on Higher Education (ACHE), to the extent one exists and ACHE distributes it, to vice presidents and deans, with a request that they attempt to contact the SREB Doctoral Fellows within applicable fields of study, and invite them to apply for positions at UAB that may be applicable to the SREB scholars’ field of study.

• An agreement to meet at least twice annually for the next five years with the elected leadership of the UAB African-American Faculty Association and African-American representatives from UAB’s staff to receive recommendations on best practices and policies for increasing diversity on the faculty and at the senior administrative levels of the institution and on the retention of such faculty and administrators. The purpose of this meeting will be to renew and exchange ideas and information about best practices.

• An agreement to attend, the next five years, a statewide meeting sponsored by the University of Alabama System for representatives of public bachelor degree-granting institutions, voluntarily to attend and discuss information about the recruitment and retention of African-American and other under-represented groups and to continue to identify effective and constitutionally permissible recruitment and retention practices.

UAB is a research university and academic health center that discovers, teaches and applies knowledge for the intellectual, cultural, social and economic benefits of Birmingham, the state and beyond.

Diversity is important to the accomplishment of this mission. Accordingly, UAB renews its commitment to diversity to fulfill its educational mission.

Sincerely,
Carol Z. Garrison
President, UAB