What university policies and practices are relevant to the recruitment, retention, and advancement of female academic scientists and engineers, and how do they affect career development? The project will: 1) develop a longitudinal contextual database of faculty recruitment, retention, and advancement-related personnel practices in Research Extensive Universities; 2) describe and characterize faculty-related personnel practices in this academic sector; 3) link the contextual database to individual-level data; and 4) develop statistical models to test academic career trajectories within and between academic institutions.
The public-use database will be of interest to scholars working in the area of gender, scientific careers and university organizational behavior by providing 1) data that can be linked to individual-level data for statistical analysis that accounts for contextual factors; and 2) data that can be used for descriptive analysis of the personnel and career-development practices of Research Extensive Universities. The research will enhance the ability of policy makers and administrative leaders to understand how the organizational contexts of universities foster conditions of equitable academic career development
The study will enable the principal investigator to develop methodological techniques that integrate the use of longitudinal and multilevel data. The research will result in the development of a graduate-level statistics course that is not currently available at Georgia Institute of Technology. The curriculum for the course is likely to be of interest to professors at other institutions as well, and will be disseminated through a professional association and on the Internet. The research team will be comprised of graduate students, undergraduate students, and public K-12 STEM professionals during all phases of the CAREER award.
