The Vanderbilt Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (V-FIRST) Program  will leverage substantial new institutional commitments to diversity and inclusion and will build on prior success to optimize recruitment and retention of Black, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian, and Pacific Islander faculty.

Our vision is for Vanderbilt to have a thriving, diverse scientific faculty and a sustainable culture of inclusive excellence that enables high-impact scientific discoveries. Our approach to V-FIRST embeds equity and inclusivity into our operational principles by leveraging existing institutional roles to implement an organizational structure to address systemic barriers to achieving diversity in our scientific faculty.

V-FIRST will focus on the hiring of faculty from minoritized racial and ethnic groups. To facilitate this, four research themes were chosen based on national strategic priorities for funding, areas of current scientific institutional strength, and demonstrated faculty commitment to inclusive excellence. Learn more about these thematic cores here.