Brunswick Community College proposes to coordinate a comprehensive study of the status of community college women faculty in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines within a consortium of community colleges in southeastern North Carolina. These community colleges include Cape Fear Community College, Bladen Community College, Southeastern Community College, Robeson Community College and Fayetteville Technical Community College. This project represents the first of its kind in the North Carolina Community College System and in any of the community college systems in the United States. This project also focuses on Intervention activities that will be designed and conducted to build awareness of issues facing community college women. Such activities will include regular informative workshops to disseminate project results, faculty leadership development seminars, professional networking groups and human resources conferences. Intellectual Merit: The Brunswick Community College ADVANCE IT Catalyst is a novel project that will provide a unique opportunity to contribute to the basic knowledge of demographics of women STEM community college faculty across the nation. Additionally, the project focuses on empowering women community college faculty as practitioner researchers. This is expected to bring community college teaching activity into mainstream research and assist in enhancing the career advancement of this cadre of faculty. Broader Impacts: Project findings from BCC will be disseminated to the President of the North Carolina Community College System and the President of the North Carolina Community College Faculty Association during the course of the project and upon its conclusion. Also, community college administrations in other states will be notified of this study and be sent a copy of the study?s final report upon their request. In this way, this project has the potential to serve as a model for other community college systems and to impact all of higher education in a meaningful way.
This project was designed to collect baseline data to (1) support an initiative for addressing the advancement of women community college faculty in STEM disciplines (2) raise awareness of issues related to these community college faculty and (3) develop targeted programs to increase the participation of these community college faculty in their institutions in preparation for advancement into leadership positions. A faculty ranking system was researched and proposed to the home institution which would reward faculty for professional accomplishments. A faculty climate survey was administered to and institutional data was collected from seven members of a consortium of community colleges in Southeastern North Carolina. In the community college study, both men and women and STEM and non-STEM faculty reported high levels of job satisfaction on a personal level, in their departments and in their institutions. STEM women faculty reported more difficulty with achieving a successful balance between work and family life than non-STEM women faculty. Women faculty comprised 50.6% of the STEM faculty in this study. The twelve month normalized salary for STEM women faculty was not significantly different that that for STEM men faculty. The range for STEM men faculty was 46097 - 67223, with an average salary of 60425. The range for women STEM faculty was 52036 - 69727, with an average of 62994.
