Faculty Incentive Fund

The Faculty Incentive Fund helps make it possible for departments and schools to make incremental appointments of qualified individuals who would bring diversity to the faculty; this can include minority scholars and (in disciplines in which they are underrepresented) women scholars, as well as others who would bring additional dimensions to the university's research and teaching programs. In some cases, these individuals are not in the precise field in which the department is searching but are in fields that are appropriate for Stanford.

The need for the fund stems from two aspects of Stanford's faculty appointments situation. First, the rates of faculty growth and turnover are very low; as a result, the university has very few openings, which must of necessity be defined relatively narrowly in order to fulfill the particular academic needs of the departments and schools with these openings. Second, the distribution of minority and women scholars does not map evenly onto the academic disciplines.

This means that, particularly with respect to minority scholars, there may be little overlap in any given year between the set of disciplines in which there are hiring opportunities and those in which there are qualified candidates who would increase faculty diversity.

The Faculty Incentive Fund resources provided by the provost, together with support supplied by the school, become a tool that facilitates optimum use of the availabilities of scholars who would bring diversity. The Provost has appointed Law School Professor Robert Weisberg as Special Assistant to the Provost, with the task of evaluating FIF requests from the school's designated dean.