The Purdue Center for Faculty Success (PCFS) will provide targeted research, programs and University-level coordination to increase the number of minority women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty positions; improve the success of all women STEM faculty; and engage all faculty in transforming the institution. The PCFS will combine NSF and institutional support to undertake research on the applicability of specific theoretical models in the Purdue environment, develop programs informed by these theoretical models and that focus on gaps in our current portfolio of initiatives, and provide formative assessment and comprehensive evaluation of programmatic impacts. University leaders and policymakers, including Purdue President and ADVANCE PI France Córdova, will use PCFS results as compelling evidence to sustain and advance institutional transformation and implement policy that will impact the Purdue STEM community and beyond. Our vision is to accelerate institutional transformation through a highly visible infrastructure that offers innovative campus-wide coordination and collaboration for initiatives such as: an innovative and prestigious Presidential ADVANCE Advocate position focused on increasing the diversity of the pool of STEM faculty candidates; enhancing the role of Purdue's ethnic cultural centers in faculty support; adapting ADVANCE best practice STRIDE and WISELI "train the trainer" workshops; mentoring cohorts of junior faculty for research and career development; providing leadership mentoring for associate and full professors; transforming the entire faculty, including majority faculty; developing Diversity Forum toolkits; and initiating Diversity Catalyst and Leader Workshops.
Intellectual Merits. Institutional ethnography is a critical method with which to approach understanding the experience of marginalized participants, and provides a new approach to enrich ADVANCE research on STEM women faculty, in particular underrepresented minority women. PCFS efforts will not only advance understanding of the applicability of pipeline and chilly climate models that ground so many "women in science" initiatives but will explore through institutional ethnography the applicability of proposed new models that integrate "boundary" metaphor approaches for exploring women's underrepresentation. Thus PCFS research will generate new knowledge and advance theoretical frameworks that will be of interest to theorists and ADVANCE programs across the nation. The Purdue ADVANCE Advocate and cultural center efforts aimed at enhancing minority women STEM faculty recruiting will be assessed for new insights into enhancing minority faculty recruitment.
Broader Impacts. Improved understanding of the career pathways of women STEM faculty at Purdue, in combination with the assessments of the effectiveness of novel programs, will result in a rigorously tested, explicitly articulated suite of programs that other institutions can adapt to their own campuses. Innovative PCFS efforts to recruit minority women STEM faculty will help address a particularly persistent national STEM challenge, and other PCFS initiatives will increase participation of women in the STEM faculty ranks and in leadership positions. This will have an immediate positive impact on STEM undergraduate and graduate women at Purdue who may contemplate a potential career in academia and potentially on all individuals who are interested in science and engineering careers. PCFS includes Research Team students at the graduate and post-doctoral level and junior faculty in all programmatic initiatives and thus will support and encourage early-career advancement. Through novel partnerships with our ethnic cultural centers, PCFS will broaden participation across campus in the recruitment and support of faculty from underrepresented groups. The transformation of the entire faculty, including majority faculty, by PCFS will provide new approaches to sustain institutional support for faculty success. In addition to publications in leading journals and presentations at national and international research conferences, Purdue will disseminate a PCFS-developed toolkit for Diversity Forums and will host a national conference focused on ADVANCE theoretical frameworks as drivers for institutional change.
