According to a new faculty committee report, the proportion of minority professors has increased over the past 15 years, but underrepresented minorities make up only a portion of that increase.

The Committee for a Multicultural University, a faculty organization that promotes recruitment and retention of minority faculty and underrepresented students at the University, found that the percentage of Asian faculty members increased from about 8 percent in 1994 to more than 14 percent in 2008 in a report released March 17.

During that same span, though, the percentage of black and Hispanic faculty members increased just one percent each to 5 and 3 percent of all faculty.

The report presented to the Senate Assembly, a group comprised of University faculty members, used data provided each year by University Human Resources to examine trends in faculty hiring across racial and ethnic categories - white, black, Asian and Hispanic.

The percentage of minority faculty has seen steady increases in all professorial ranks: professor, associate professor and assistant professor.

Asian faculty has increased, more significantly in associate and assistant professorial roles than in the full professor position. While the report shows that the proportion of Hispanic faculty members has increased at the rank of professor and less steadily at the associate rank, the percentage of Hispanic professors at the assistant professor position is at the same level today as it was in 1994.

Significant increases in black faculty can only be found at the associate level. At the professor rank, black faculty has only increased slightly, while there has been a decline in the proportion of black assistant professors.

CMU Chairman Billy Joe Evans, a Chemistry department professor emeritus, called the lack of growth for black and Hispanic hires at the assistant professor level "particularly troubling" because the University feeds its own faculty into higher professorial ranks through that position.

The data show that the percentage of minorities receiving assistant professor appointments has increased significantly by more than 10 percent from 1994 to 2008. "Overall there has been no significant change in the hiring rates of black and Hispanics," the report concludes.

Senior Vice Provost Lester Monts said in an e-mail interview that the University values the study from CMU.

"Dr. Billy Joe Evans and the Committee for a Multicultural University have done an important service for the University," said Monts, who attends the committee's meetings. "Their faculty perspective on these important matters is vital to our moving forward on these issues."

In the report, CMU also broke down data down by individual schools and compared levels of minority composition by school unit. The Stephen M. Ross School of Business outpaces all other units in proportion of minority faculty, with this proportion consisting overwhelmingly of Asian faculty. The Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the School of Social Work and the University's Dearborn campus come in closely behind the Business School in their proportions of minority faculty.

While the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy had a 30-percent increase in minority faculty - the greatest of any school or college - it does not have a single black faculty member, according to the report.

In an e-mailed statement, Public Policy Dean Susan Collins defended her school's hiring processes and diversity policies.

"Our faculty search committees are charged with developing as extensive a pool of candidates as possible," she said. "This has helped us identify strong candidates from under-represented groups for some of our searches, and is something we will continue to take very seriously."

Collins said one of the major roadblocks to hiring more minority faculty members in Public Policy is the lack of black, Hispanic and Native American candidates in the "educational pipeline" of economics, political science and sociology Ph.D programs, which she said was the typical source for assistant professors.

"Increasing the numbers who make it through the pipeline is a critical part of any long-term strategy for addressing concerns about lack of faculty diversity," she said.

Collins also said that many members of the Ford School faculty are involved in work to bring more minorities into their discipline through mentoring and special training programs.

Evans said the the data his committee examined refutes the "pipeline" argument.

"National data from the National Science Foundation shows that Ph.D production for all minorities has been increasing," said Evans, who's in his first year as chair of the committee.