Five years after Faculty 500, a hiring initiative that aimed to employ faculty who could contribute to the university, was completed, colleges and departments at UF are still reaping the benefits.
In 2017, UF announced it would spearhead the initiative to hire 500 faculty members to push UF’s status as a top public research university. The new hires would join campus throughout 2018. The new hiring push would contribute to the 300 to 400 faculty members UF hires each year to fill positions left open by departing employees.
The Florida legislature allocated $52 million to UF to help kickstart the initiative. The university also contributed money it fundraised.
After one year of the initiative, UF hired over 750 new faculty members, including 231 new positions across 16 colleges.
Luca Di Cerbo, a UF associate professor in mathematics, was one of them. He became a professor at UF in Fall 2018 after he found the job posting online.
Throughout the hiring process, he was convinced that UF would be his best choice.
“I professionally thought that the math department was a great fit for my interest,” Di Cerbo said.
Another one of UF’s priorities was to minimize its student-to-faculty ratio from 20:1 to 16:1. The ratio is an important measurement used when ranking universities. UF reached a ratio of 17:1 in Fall 2023, a UF spokesperson confirmed.
UF Human Resources did not respond in time to comment on the impact of Faculty 500.
Di Cerbo was drawn to UF due to its topology programs, a branch of geometry. He also considered the cost of housing and daycare and the university's prestige when making his final decision. He knew he was being hired as part of Faulty 500, which he said further compelled him to join the faculty.
“There was a lot of excitement about UF rising in the ranks and hiring a lot of young people,” he said.
He was also interested in contributing to a tighter student-to-faculty ratio. It helps students learn the material better and allows them to connect with professors, especially when it comes time to request a letter of recommendation, he added.
“If I’m teaching a class with 300 people, it’s hard for me to get to know anyone at that level,” he said.
He was hired alongside six other faculty members through the initiative. Two members from that group have left. Di Cerbo said the mathematics department continues to hire new faculty members consistently in the years following the end of the initiative.
The impacts of the Faculty 500 initiative vary among colleges and departments. The UF College of Arts saw success through the program.
Onye Ozuzu, the former dean of the UF College of Arts, was hired Fall 2018 while the initiative was in full swing. The college was already set on increasing faculty, so Ozuzu used the Faculty 500 Initiative as a boost.
Before the initiative kicked off, colleges had to submit requests that counted the number of faculty positions in need of filling before a hiring process could begin.
“We were very motivated to leverage this historic opportunity to hire strategically,” Ozuzu wrote in an email.
According to Ozuzu, UF Human Resources developed a hiring method that centered on prioritizing research and adjusting the student-to-faculty ratio, she wrote. HR trained hiring committee members and created consistent messaging about the university and specific colleges during the hiring process.
After the initiative, the College of Arts hired 32 new faculty members over the last three years, increasing the number of faculty members by 28%. Hires either replaced previous positions or were hired under the more recent AI Initiative, which took on 100 new “AI-focused” faculty in 2020.
The spike in new faculty hires also impacted diversity across the college. The percentage of Black faculty doubled from 4.4% to 10.6%. The percentage of Hispanic faculty also increased, going from 4.4% to 8.61%. It also increased the number of Asian faculty by 2%.
Through the initiative, the college collected retention data using an exit interview process. It also implemented a “year one onboarding process” to help retain new employees.
The College of Arts saw a rise in distinguished faculty in the years following the initiative. Professors hired included Grammy Award winners, a Guggenheim Fellow and Tony Award-winning producers.
However, of the list of 13 professors Ozuzu provided as an example of the initiative’s impact on the quality of the recruitment process, five faculty members are no longer with the college. Their positions have already been filled.
An increase in the number of faculty also impacts United Faculty of Florida at UF. The union represents the total number of faculty employed at the university. New faculty members are not part of the union by default, so the union has to actively recruit new hires to keep its membership alive. Under state law, the union needs the backing of at least 60% of faculty.
It’s an impact the union is willing to take on. Between 2014 and 2020, the union gained 175 new members while the bargaining unit grew to 2,100, UFF-UF president Meera Sitharam wrote in an email.
Sean Trainer, an instructional assistant professor at the Warrington College of Business and the membership chair for UFF-UF, was supportive of hiring new faculty.
Trainer was first employed by UF in 2016 and became a full-time faculty member in Fall 2018. While he wasn’t hired under the initiative, he heard about the program from his colleagues. The university was eager to promote the initiative, he said.
Trainer doesn’t see it as a negative to the union.
“We are all about growing the community,” he said. “Even in a hypothetical world where another Faculty 500 initiative cratered our density, I think we’d still support it just because it’s good for our students.”
Contact Delia Rose Sauer at drosesauer@alligator.org. Follow her on X @_delia_rose_.
Delia Rose Sauer is a junior journalism student and the Fall 2024 University General Assignment Reporter. This is her second semester on the University Desk. In her free time, she's drawing on Procreate, crocheting or exploring music genres.
