University of Detroit-Mercy (UDM), a predominantly undergraduate institution, will break down barriers to STEM women faculty's advancement through its ADVANCE IT-Catalyst award. ADVANCE IT-Catalyst awards are designed to help academic institutions collect the data needed to understand where to most effectively put their efforts to make them more supportive places to work. UDM is currently changing to an institution that engages students in active science, engineering and math research, a move that puts pressure on faculty to increase their research capacity. Prior study by the ADVANCE team at UDM revealed challenges common to all faculty during this transition and challenges unique to STEM women. Women may be isolated as the only women in a STEM department; they appear to have less access to information networks, experience uncertain application of family-friendly policies, and a higher turnover rate.
The ADVANCE IT-Catalyst team will promote a partnership between UDM faculty and administrators to further study the needs of UDM STEM women faculty and to develop strategies to address STEM women faculty's unique challenges as well as challenges common to all faculty. The team will collect data on faculty demographic characteristics, including factors distinguishing to UDM, such as length of commute to work for faculty. They will conduct a climate study and follow up with focus groups of faculty to explore potential solutions. They will develop a standard method to measure workload among faculty that has the potential to become a standard for academic institutions interested in a fair distribution of the workload, thus having a broad impact on the STEM enterprise.
