The Office of the Provost, in partnership with the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences, the Diederich College of Communication, the College of Business Administration, the Opus College of Engineering and the College of Nursing, has announced a cluster hire of additional faculty members to bolster its Race, Ethnic and Indigenous Studies program during the 2019-20 academic year.
Cluster hiring involves recruiting multiple scholars into one or more departments based on shared, interdisciplinary research interests. Beyond helping to establish Marquette’s REIS program, cluster hiring will also help advance faculty diversity, a key priority in the university’s strategic plan, Beyond Boundaries.
“Marquette University continues its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusive excellence by offering diverse of areas of study along with faculty whose backgrounds support it,” said Acting Provost Kimo Ah Yun. “It’s critical for Marquette to develop the best possible community of teachers and scholars in the areas represented by REIS, and the cluster hire will build upon what we are already doing in this area.”
Among the departments the cluster will benefit are economics (microeconomics, with a focus on issues pertaining to underrepresented groups); psychology; communication (health communication and digital media); philosophy (bioethics, public philosophy, critical phenomenology, environmental philosophy, etc.); anthropology (biocultural/biosocial anthropology, health inequalities, public health, environmental justice, etc.); and theology (patristic theology developed in a context of conflict and engagement with other religions and philosophies). Additional positions have been added in engineering and nursing.
The Race, Ethnic and Indigenous Studies Program is housed in Marquette’s Klingler College of Arts and Sciences, and supports interdisciplinary majors and minors in a number of fields including Africana Studies (major and minor), LatinX Studies (minor), Arab and Muslim American Studies (minor), Literatures of Diverse Cultures (minor), and Culture, Health and Illness (minor).
This is Marquette’s third cluster hire to support REIS after bringing aboard six faculty members during the 2017-18 academic year. In 2018-19, nine faculty members made up the cluster.