The West Virginia University ADVANCE project has an overall goal of providing policies and support to retain and promote women to higher professorial ranks. This is in response to a direct need to address an increasing trend of faculty attrition among women in the STEM disciplines. Specifically, the project aims to focus on three primary objectives. They include: making direct connections between faculty needs and policies and practices at the institution; recruiting, retaining and promoting more women faculty in the STEM disciplines; and engaging faculty in a dialogical change process as a mechanism toward achieving institutional transformation. As a result of these measures, the institution expects to be able to achieve very impressive outcomes, including, but not limited to: development of a methodology for institutional transformation that can be applicable to all institution types, improvement of climate issues as identified in climate surveys and exit interviews, significant increases in the representation of women faculty in the STEM disciplines, particularly at higher professorial ranks.
Intellectual Merit. There are several novel approaches presented in the proposal including: implementation of an endowed fund to support women in STEM; a week long boot camp for new faculty; search committee certification in objective evaluation, which offers a feasible plan for accountability; mini sabbaticals in year 3 of the tenure track to minimize an excessive teaching load burden experienced by most faculty at the institution; attrition planning training for chairs to ensure that progress continues in each department in the event the current chair is no longer in place. A major strength of the WVU ADVANCE IT project is its focus on dialogue exchange among faculty toward exchanging climate. This model is well documented in the social science component of the proposal, and has not been largely examined within the ADVANCE community.
Broader Impact. The West Virginia ADVANCE IT project proposes to utilize mechanisms of achieving institutional transformation that are potentially adaptable to all institution types, including two-year institutions. To that end, this project has the potential to impact both typical and atypical ADVANCE institutions. Project accomplishments are expected to be broadly disseminated through traditional means that would include peer reviewed journal articles, national presentations and targeted outreach.
