U. of Kentucky Expands Its Faculty Ranks

The University of Kentucky has hired 200 new faculty members this fall in a push to raise its academic profile, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. (See a UK press release for more information.)

After counting faculty resignations (112) and retirements (39), that amounts to a net increase of 60 faculty members, the reporter, Linda Blackford, writes. The university has created a total of 74 new faculty jobs this year and last year combined, she notes.

The long-range plan is to hire an additional 625 faculty members by 2020, for a total of 2,500, in order to lower the student-faculty ratio from 18:1 to 17:1, she writes.

Among the new hires, Blackford writes, are …

10 new African-American faculty, the largest number of hires since 2002-3. Of these, seven are women and three are in senior, tenured positions. None of those people were hired by the College of Arts and Sciences, the second-largest college at UK.

Over all, the numbers represent a net increase of six African-American faculty members – for a total of 81, about 3.7 percent of the entire faculty. …

Five Hispanic faculty members have joined UK as well, compared to two hires last year.