Search Advocate Training for faculty and administrators will be offered as a pre-summit workshop on Wednesday, November 2, 2016, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Seating is limited to the first 100 registrants.
Program Overview
Search advocates are trained process experts who serve as members of search committees to enhance the fairness, validity, and diversity of university search and selection efforts. Using current research, theory, and practical strategies, this workshop prepares advocates to work with search committees from position development through integration of the new employee. Participants learn facilitative questioning techniques to help committee members test their thinking, identify and address complex process concerns, improve search validity and fairness, understand and promote diversity, and anticipate and address potential bias risks.
The search advocate program at Oregon State University begins with this initial training, and includes a listserv with periodic newsletters, an ongoing community of practice, update and advanced workshops, advocate coaching, and a variety of other ad hoc learning opportunities which contribute to meeting continuing education requirements for advocate eligibility.
Pre-Workshop Requirement for Participants
Prior to the workshop, confirmed registrants should go to the Project Implicit website and take two or more of the social identity implicit associations tests available there. Results are confidential, and participants may choose if they wish to share them during the workshop.
Speaker Bio
Anne Gillies has directed Oregon State University's Search Advocate program since its inception in 2007. With over 30 years of higher education experience, she has worked with equity, inclusion, and diversity in faculty recruitment and selection at Oregon State for the last 20 years. She grew up in the Midwest and first migrated west with a “relatively fresh BA” in English Literature in the early 1980s.
According to Anne, her interest in hiring and employment began when she arrived in Yosemite National Park to work as a hotel maid and was promoted on the spot to phone reservation clerk because of her degree. She states, “They always told me that my liberal arts degree would prepare me to do anything, but until then I hadn't realized exactly what that meant!”
Please read the following recent articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education about Anne Gillies and her program: “Questions to Ask to Help Create a Diverse Applicant Pool” and “How to Do a Better Job of Searching for Diversity.”