The College Fix

Student government and minority groups at the University of Pennsylvania are preparing recommendations for the schools $100 million faculty diversity initiative, reports the Daily Pennsylvanian:

The Diversity Action Plan — released in June — will devote $100 million over the next five years to hiring and retaining more diverse faculty members across 12 undergraduate and graduate schools.

The minority groups working on this project include the United Minorities Council, the Latino Coalition, the black students’ coalition group UMOJA, the Asian Pacific Student Coalition, Penn Consortium of Undergraduate Women and the LGBT umbrella group Lambda Alliance.

“Sadly, compared to our peer institutions, we aren’t doing very well,” Wharton junior and Latino Coalition Chair Angel Contrera said.

Contrera cited a Minority Equity Report published in 2010, which reported that only 5 percent of Penn’s faculty is black and hispanic.

This places Penn at the bottom of Ivy League institutions in terms of Latino faculty, he added.

The plan requires each school at the university to appoint a diversity officer (an increasingly common practice at universities), although so far, only three schools have done so.

[The Daily Pennsylvanian]

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