Despite the important role the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) plays in educating the workforce in STEM fields, the gender and ethnic profile of its faculty members who provide this training is far narrower than the diversity of its students. The number of women faculty in UMD?s Swenson College of Sciences and Engineering (SCSE) falls well below national averages with women comprising less than 14% of the SCSE tenure-track faculty, and 4% of the full professors. In addition, the attrition of female faculty within SCSE in recent years is considerably higher than for SCSE male faculty members. This two-year planning and assessment project will determine if there are institutional barriers that work against the hiring, tenure, promotion, and advancement of women at UMD in general, and women in the STEM fields in particular.
Intellectual Merit: UMD will undertake an evidence-based approach to understanding the current status of women within the STEM fields at UMD. Such an approach requires collection of a broad, deep, and thorough suite of institutional data, as well as a range of non-institutional data. UMD will pursue robust, careful, and comprehensive analysis of these data in order to understand the status of women STEM faculty. In addition, a range of best practices for recruitment, retention, and advancement of STEM women that have been identified, pioneered, and tested by academic institutions across the country will be studied. This proposal will work toward achieving a professional environment within SCSE and UMD that is transparent and equitable, and that facilitates successful academic careers for female STEM faculty, including advancement to the highest ranks of academic leadership.
Broader Impact: Together these activities will enable us to design a comprehensive, integrative, and successful plan for institutional change, with the goal of increasing diversity in STEM faculty in order to advance UMD's historically strong role in education within these field; increases in faculty diversity contribute in turn to enhanced diversity in the future workforce in science, engineering, and technological fields. It is anticipated that an institutional transformation plan will be beneficial for all UMD faculty, students and staff and could be a model for other similar institutions.
