Commonwealth Compact Leads Business Schools for Diversity Initiative

Nine Massachusetts business schools are collaborating to diversify their faculties, an unprecedented move among the nine deans, who normally compete to attract top faculty talent.

Instead, recruiters this year are distributing brochures nationally, encouraging budding academics from underserved minority groups to look to Massachusetts by sending resumes through Commonwealth Compact, the statewide diversity initiative that is housed at UMass Boston's McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, which will then distribute them to all nine schools.

The deans’ goal is “to provide our students with educational excellence that can be achieved only through a diverse educational experience,” according to the Business School Collaborative’s mission statement.

In 2008, benchmark data compiled by Commonwealth Compact, schools that are members of the compact, including all nine in the collaborative, reported that their faculties were only four percent African American and four percent Hispanic, far less than the proportion of students or administration employees of color. There is no current data for the business schools alone. More than two dozen colleges and universities are now members of the compact.

“This unique collaborative sends an important message,” said Georgianna Melendez, executive director of Commonwealth Compact. “Massachusetts values talent, and will rise with one voice to attract the very best professionals to enrich our schools and, before long, our business community.”

The members of the Massachusetts Business School Collaborative are Babson College, Bentley University, Boston University, Bridgewater State University, Northeastern University, Salem State University, Simmons College, University of Massachusetts Boston, and University of Massachusetts Lowell. 

Launched in 2008, Commonwealth Compact is an ambitious statewide initiative to help Massachusetts reclaim the status it once had as a world leader in diversity and inclusion. More than 250 organizations, including many of the state’s largest employers, are members.

For more information about the Massachusetts Business School Collaborative, please contact Georgianna Melendez at  617.287.4875 or Earl Avery at Bentley University at 781.891.2907.