'We actively encourage ethnic minority candidates to apply for senior posts'

Faye Doris is chair of the racial equality working group at Plymouth University. She is the academic lead for midwifery in the university's School of Health Professions, faculty of health and social work.

She has been a senior academic at Plymouth since 1996 and describes it as a friendly and welcoming place to work for ethnic minorities.

"I have always been involved in diversity and equality work here," she said.

"This university has taken its responsibilities under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act seriously and has produced an extensive implementation plan.

"We carefully monitor our ethnic minority figures and have produced targets for improvement over the next ten years.

"We actively encourage suitable ethnic minority candidates to apply for senior posts."

She added that the university had looked at ethnic minority populations in its area and benchmarked its employment statistics accordingly.

"We come out well against that benchmark, but we want to improve. We also want to recruit more academics internationally."

She added that Plymouth's strong health profile and development of new courses in allied health professions would probably see more ethnic minority academics come through the ranks.

"These areas have traditionally attracted an ethnically diverse group of academics," she said.

"Ethnic minority representation is an issue that is openly and actively discussed across this campus and diversity is something that heads of school and course leaders have all signed up to," she concluded.