More than one year after the UA announced a comprehensive action plan to recruit a more diverse faculty, administrators say they have increased faculty diversity, though some faculty say they've seen little change.

"There is a diversity agenda, and that is to reflect the population in all areas of the university," said Edith Auslander, senior associate to the president.

Juan Garcia, vice provost for academic affairs, said an executive search team has been put together to make sure the university recruits more women and minority faculty.

"We're looking at our own policy and procedures to make sure we're more sensitive to what we need to do in order to attract more women and minority faculty," Garcia said.

Administrators say they won't have minority faculty numbers available until the fall, but that they have noticed an increase.

Garcia said he knows there has been an increase because of the number of women and minority faculty the UA has hired.

"I know from the contracts I've signed that I have seen more women and minorities being offered positions here at the UA," he said.

Charles Tatum, dean of the College of Humanities, said the number of women faculty in the humanities college has increased to 40 percent and that minority numbers have also increased. Tatum said of the nine faculty members hired two years go, six were American Indian, Hispanic or black. Last year, two more black women were hired, Tatum said.

Despite the increase in certain colleges, there are some who think there is a lack of diversity in the science departments.

Alfonso Ortega, associate professor in the department of aerospace and mechanical engineering, said though the number of women

faculty in the college of engineering has gone up, little effort has been made to hire minority faculty.

"Part of the reason is it's very difficult to find highly qualified minority applicants in science and engineering," he said.

Garcia said there have been challenges in trying to make the faculty population more diverse.

These challenges include competition from other universities for the same group of people, salary level and the potential faculty member's ability to adapt to the community. He said potential faculty also examine whether there are a core group of minority faculty present in the academic area they are interested in.

Ortega said he thinks hiring women faculty would bring diverse opinions and ways of doing things that would add to the department.

"I think it's a department that could very much benefit from a woman faculty member," he said, "but we have none."

Ortega said there has been an increase in the enrollment of female undergraduate and graduate students in his department, and they could benefit by having a female faculty member as a role model, in addition to the mentoring that they would be able to receive.

"In science and engineering ... we have to be extremely proactive in identifying, recruiting and then retaining minority faculty," Ortega said. "It won't happen over night."

John McGrath, head of the aerospace and engineering department, said the department is working to increase its diversity, but the pool of women and minority faculty members who are highly qualified is small.

"We are proactive about hiring women and minority," he said. "Those people must have excellent credentials; we aim to have the best possible program."

Julie Higle, professor of systems and industrial engineering, said the problem is pervasive, but she thinks everyone in the college is working hard to correct it.

"If you start with the dean and go down the department heads, I'm pretty confident that everyone would love to be more successful in increasing the diversity of the faculty at the college," she said.

In fall 2002, 2,681 of 13,834 UA employees were minorities, and in fall 2003, 2,800 of 14,055 employees were minorities.