This project is designed to increase the work satisfaction, retention, and advancement of women faculty in science and engineering at Boston University through enhancing women's networks, and to analyze the ways in which network-building can contribute to women's satisfaction and success in academic science and engineering. Programs adapted from ADVANCE schools and some developed at BU will be implemented to build strong and functional networks for women faculty. Programs will include pre-tenure mentoring, lunches with leaders, inter-university and industry interactions, re-start-up grants to reinvigorate the networks of female faculty in STEM disciplines, and catalyst grants to support new collaborative research ventures. To evaluate the effectiveness of these programs in fostering strong networks for women, male and female faculty will be surveyed at the beginning of the grant period and at its end about the individuals in their networks who provide them with important resources such as professional advice. Respondents also will be asked how they met individuals in their networks. Comparing responses from the first and the final survey we will learn about the ways in which academic networks grow and change over time. Finally, we will examine whether participation in ADVANCE programs is associated with changes in women's networks over time and whether characteristics of networks are associated with work satisfaction and productivity and with benchmarks such as promotion.
Intellectual merit: The innovative aspect of this work is its systematic approach to building and analyzing social networks to improve the career success and satisfaction of women faculty. Many of the networking and mentoring programs developed through ADVANCE projects are explicitly designed to enhance women's networks, and thus their access to critical information, influence, recognition, and collaborative opportunities, but few programs track changes in women's networks over time to assess the role of such programs in enhancing women's networks or monitor the association between changes in characteristics of women's networks and the career success and satisfaction of women faculty. The data from our prospective, longitudinal study will identify links between our ADVANCE programs and changes over time in women's networks, satisfaction, and career success.
Broader impacts: Greater understanding about ways to overcome network limitations and enhance networks should help to increase the retention of women faculty in STEM disciplines and may well generalize to other groups such as women graduate students. Research findings about the implications of network characteristics may also generalize to non-academic work places and to other academic disciplines. The network analysis tools developed as part of the WIN project will be made available for use by other institutions. This work will also fund 20+ new collaborative research projects in a broad range of STEM fields, launching new research in science and engineering spearheaded by women.
