Bridgewater State University (BSI) will examine how flexibility in the workplace, meaning flexible hours and conditions of work, may improve the representation and advancement of women faculty in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). BSU will conduct a series of interviews and a survey to better understand how women in STEM, especially women faculty of color, who work either full time or part time at teaching-intensive institutions, may be supported in the academic environment. Both men and women faculty, especially at teaching-intensive institutions, will benefit from the findings because the project will result in recommendations on changing the work place environment to achieve better work-life integration and a more supportive environment.
The study has a two-pronged approach to understanding workplace flexibility by 1) investigating full-time faculty members' access to, and experiences with, workplace flexibility, and 2) by examining how to better support part-time faculty so that part-time work is a more viable path to workplace flexibility using a mixed methods approach. Special attention will be paid to the perspectives of women faculty of color, given their severe underrepresentation on campus. Previous published research on women in STEM has focused almost entirely on research institutions, so this study will offer a significant contribution to the literature by systematically documenting the experiences of women faculty in STEM at a teaching-intensive university. Previous research has shown that women scientists often experience identity interference, which occurs when the norms and expectations of being a woman interfere with those associated with being a scientist. However, faculty at teaching-intensive universities may have a strong teacher identity that can bridge the gap between their woman identity and scientist identity, so long as they are provided the workplace flexibility to explore different facets of their professional lives and achieve effective work-life integration. This study will test this hypothesis while empirically exploring how to increase workplace flexibility for both full- and part-time faculty members. This study is specifically designed to provide empirical support that will motivate institutional transformation to support the advancement of women in STEM at BSU. Results of this study are expected to impact the experiences of women in STEM across the state university system. Furthermore, because there is a dearth of information in the scientific literature regarding faculty in STEM beyond research-intensive institutions, disseminating the results of this study can inspire other teaching-intensive institutions to consider the ways that they can support the advancement of women in STEM. While this study is focused solely on faculty experiences, supporting faculty at teaching-intensive universities can have a positive effect on a large number of students, given the close relationships between faculty and undergraduate students at teaching-intensive universities. Finally, because previous research has suggested that workplace flexibility is crucial to the advancement of women of color in STEM, transformations motivated by this project could increase the racial and ethnic diversity of STEM fields.
