UMass Chan Medical School
PA-7: Support for Future Faculty Diversity

UMass Memorial Health Care and UMass Medical School provide residents in all generalist and specialist programs opportunities for supervised experiences in both tertiary and community practice through residency and fellowship programs. The fellowship and residency applications include a statement of non-discriminations and web links to diversity and minority support. Additionally, as a graduate institution UMass Medical School supports underrepresented groups pursuing terminal degrees through scholarships, including awarding "Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students" (SDS), a program funded through the Department of Health and Human Services and is awarded to students who come from environments that inhibit individuals from obtaining knowledge, skills, and abilities required to enroll in and graduate from medical school.

The Minority Academic Advancement Committee makes recommendations to recruit and retain minority faculty and staff. The MAAC continues to focus on faculty and resident recruitment but have also begun to support efforts to recruit and retain postdoctoral fellows and students in all three graduate schools. In addition, the committee has made recommendations to the University leadership to adopt, for all departments, best practice guidelines for recruitment and retention. The MAAC has also made themselves available to departments to support their recruitment and retention efforts.

Also, the Faculty Diversity Scholars Program (FDSP), administered by the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, is part of UMMS’s multifaceted approach to workforce diversity. The primary goal of the FDSP is to recruit new faculty (including the School of Medicine, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and the Graduate School of Nursing) from underrepresented groups in the health sciences and to support their successful academic career advancement. In order to address departments with minority underutilization, African American and Hispanic/Latino(a) faculty are among the underrepresented groups who specifically would benefit from this program.