‘Clusterluck’ film chronicles Black academics’ cluster hiring experiences at SIUE

Workplaces across many industries are struggling to attract employees and creating a sustainable workplace environment for them. Practices like cluster hiring are meant to hire groups of individuals with similar identities. In theory, the strategy is intended to create a professional support system that both honors the identities of newer employees and helps retain longer-tenured workers.

In the documentary film “Clusterluck,” Southern Illinois University Edwardsville professor and first-time film producer Candace Hall chronicles her personal experience in a cluster hire in the university’s School of Education.

Hall said: “It rarely happens that you have such a critical mass of Black faculty in a department. For me, it was important that people would be able to see the community.”

Instead of writing a traditional academic paper, Hall thought it best to show in film, rather than tell. She said, “I’d hope that [the audience] would be able to feel the sense of community, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to get that across in the paper alone.”