Andrea G. Hunter, a professor of human development and family studies. Hunter is a chancellor’s fellow for campus climate and serves in Gilliam’s cabinet. She spends about half her time working on campus diversity efforts — promoting self-awareness and engagement with anti-racism through workshops and training, determining which campus policies and procedures undermine equity, and ensuring there’s assessment and accountability.
Hunter has seen 20 years of evolution in her department. Progress required curricular reform, training, and a lot of deep, reflective conversations to make sure professors understood the experiences of students and faculty members who didn’t look like them, Hunter says. And it required disrupting the informal practices, such as promoting job openings only within narrow professional networks, that tended to replicate the professors who were already there.
Her department’s faculty is now about one-third people of color, and a Black woman just became the chair. Diversity has made the department better, Hunter says. The quality of the faculty-applicant pool has improved. UNC Greensboro’s program in human development and family studies is now among the top five nationwide, she says.