ADVANCEing women faculty in STEM: empirical findings and practical recommendations from National Science Foundation ADVANCE institutions

Abstract

ADVANCEing women faculty in STEM: empirical findings and practical recommendations from National Science Foundation ADVANCE institutions Since its foundation in 2001, the US National Science Foundation's (NSF) ADVANCE program has invested over $315m to support initiatives at more than 175 institutions of higher education (IHEs) and STEM-related nonprofit organizations. ADVANCE is a cross-disciplinary program focused on broadening the participation (BP) of diverse people and institutions. Programs within the ADVANCE portfolio focus on increasing the representation and advancement of women and underrepresented minorities (URM) in academic STEM careers, developing mechanisms to promote gender equity in the STEM academic workforce, and aiding in diversifying the science and engineering workforce. ADVANCE also seeks to contribute to the general knowledge research based on gender equity in academic STEM disciplines, encouraging IHEs to identify and address aspects of STEM academic culture and institutional structures that negatively affect women faculty. A seminal program within the ADVANCE portfolio is the Institutional Transformation (IT) grant, which provides large scale, multi-year funding to IHEs focused on fundamental organizational changes that should BP over the long term. Consistent with the goals of the NSF ADVANCE program, a vibrant research community has emerged to explore the factors that facilitate or hinder BP efforts. This research, broadly categorized as the Science of Broadening Participation (SoBP), identifies a range of structural and systemic factors (e.g. bias in recruitment and promotion decisions, the absence of peer networks and mentoring opportunities) contributing to the slow pace of change. Yet, broad dissemination of knowledge and adoption of best practices from the SoBP literature is challenging, which limits opportunities for the academy and larger STEM workforce to realize more consistent and widespread gains in BP. We describe four specific challenges below. First, substantive work in the BP literature describes organization-centered models for change that target specific organizational structures, cultures and practices that can produce or relieve inequities (Bird, 2011; Laursen and Austin, 2014; Morimoto et al., 2013). Because these models are institution specific, they do not translate readily across institutions that vary in mission, size, student population, reward structures, leadership and various other characteristics. Instead, transferring best practices or policies across institutions requires a more nuanced understanding of and adjustment to the local (Bilimoria and Liang, 2012). Second, the academy is marked by strong and highly demarcated disciplinary cultures. These cultures, or academic tribes (Becher and Trowler, 2001), reflect norms and values developed and internalized over time that govern how faculty in those disciplines interact, allocate their time, conduct their research and evaluate success. Differences between those disciplinaryand thus departmentalcultures ofte...

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