Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted higher education and the work of faculty in many ways, with serious repercussions for diversity, equity, and inclusion. This brief summarizes studies that consider the impact of the pandemic on different groups of faculty members; describes interventions institutions have used to mitigate and document the impact of the pandemic on faculty equity; and finally identifies key equity issues that may emerge in faculty evaluation and provides strategies for how evaluation committees can put in place “equity checks” (O’Meara, 2020; Posselt et al., 2020) to enhance fairness.
Impact of COVID-19 on Faculty
Though all faculty members have likely been influenced by the pandemic in some way, women faculty members, who are more likely to be in caregiver roles, and Black, Brown, and Indigenous faculty members, communities that have been most impacted by the pandemic, have experienced disproportionate disruptions to their scholarly productivity. The research in this area is substantial (and growing) and shows:
- The pandemic has negatively impacted women faculty members’ scholarly output, as indicated by analysis of publications (Cui et al., 2020; Squazzoni et al., 2020) and self-reports (Krukowski et al., 2020; Myers et al., 2020). Increased childcare responsibilities in the wake of school and daycare closures and an increase in domestic responsibilities along gender lines are the primary reason women faculty members’ productivity has been undercut (Cardel et al., 2020).
- Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities have been more dramatically impacted by the pandemic (Evans, 2020; Garcia et al, 2020). As such, faculty from these groups may encounter greater or changing caregiver demands. Furthermore, in the wake of the protest for racial justice, many faculty members of color have experienced intensified stress and been called upon to participate in even more diversity, equity, and inclusion service activities, thereby increasing their workloads (Domingo et al., 2020; Hanasono et al., 2018)
- Pandemic-related barriers vary by discipline/field, with faculty members in STEM fields reporting physical barriers to accessing their labs, and faculty in the humanities encountering barriers to physical materials and performance sites(Myers et al., 2020; Settles & Linderman, 2020; Wachorn et al., 2020).
In response, many higher education leaders have called for new ways to keep equity in mind as units move forward with faculty evaluation activities (merit reviews, annual reviews, promotion and tenure, etc.). Some of these activities include:
- COVID Tenure Delay (Clark et al., 2020; Gonzales & Griffin, 2020; Malisch et al., 2020;)
- COVID Impact statements (Clark et al., 2020, Misra, 2020)
- Documenting the Impact of COVID (Misra, 2020; University of Maryland ADVANCE)
- Modification of evaluative criteria that recognize pandemic-related slowdowns/impact (Gonzales & Griffin, 2020; Settles & Linderman, 2020)
- Training for evaluation committees on equitable evaluation (UMass ADVANCE; Georgia Tech)
- Alternative forms of teaching evaluations (e.g., written reflections, before and after syllabi, peer observations) (Gonzales & Griffin, 2020).
- Workload modifications (Gonzales & Griffin, 2020; O’Meara et al., 2021; Settles & Linderman, 2020)