The Association for Women in Science (AWIS) will organize and host the 2011 workshop for the ADVANCE Principal Investigators (PI). This project will feature a 2-day workshop in early November of 2011 that will not only serve as an opportunity to disseminate cutting research and findings gleaned from ADVANCE projects, but also serve to expand outreach efforts of ADVANCE to a broader audience that will include representatives from minority serving institutions, as well as other diversity stakeholders in the STEM disciplines. Specifically, the project will focus on identifying topics for discussion, identifying and soliciting keynote speakers and developing a dissemination plan.
Intellectual Merit: The goals of this organization are well aligned with the mission of the ADVANCE Program. As such, it is ideally suited to host an ADVANCE PI meeting. The proposed project will bring together ADVANCE PIs of institutional transformation, institution transformation catalyst and PAID awards for a workshop that will not only foster networking and dissemination of new knowledge in the social science and organizational change disciplines, but also attract a wider audience to the ADVANCE community. Specifically, this meeting will target individuals from minority serving institutions. Historically, the ADVANCE Program has not had a significant impact on this cadre of institutions of higher education.
Broader Impacts: The broader impacts of this project lie in its capacity to disseminate information on innovations discovered by all ADVANCE projects as well as the insight gleaned from research to an expanded target audience that includes women faculty from a diverse set of instituions.
Broadening Participation and Inclusion: 2011 ADVANCE Program Workshop This project was novel in that it was designed to carry the innovations funded by the ADVANCE program and the insight gleaned from research into an expanded realm, to new audiences that influence the national conversation on how to meet the coming challenge of providing a technical workforce for US industry, higher education, government, and other work sectors. AWIS leveraged its already established liaison network to extend the dissemination and adoption of strategies to improve recruitment and retention of women and underrepresented minorities. Inclusion of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges, and Hispanic-serving institutions were a logical audience to broaden participation and dissemination of the ADVANCE best practices and lessons learned. They play a central and critical role in the advancement of women in STEM. Using data from recent reports on the underrepresentation of minority faculty and students in the STEM disciplines, there is a clear need to redouble initiatives to encourage diversity and inclusion. In the National Academy of Science Report Rising Above the Gathering Storm (NAS, 2007), recommendations were provided to address the issue of low numbers of underrepresented minorities in STEM. The cause has been linked to several areas along the pipeline to a STEM career. These include the fact that underrepresented minority students are less prepared for STEM majors. Recent data from the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA shows that underrepresented minorities aspire to major in STEM in college at the same rates as their white and Asian American peers, but have lower four- and five-year completion rates relative to those of whites and Asian Americans (HERI, 2010). Additionally, underrepresented minority STEM students are more likely to drop out or switch to non-STEM majors (52.6%) as undergraduate students when compared to their white and Asian counterparts (37%) (Huang et al, 2000). As a result STEM degree attainment at the Bachelor’s (17.7%), Master’s (14.6%) and Doctoral level (5.4%) are all much lower for underrepresented minorities (NAS, 2010). Specifically when one looks at the numbers of underrepresented minority women, in 1996-2004, 8.3% of all women earning science and engineering doctorates were either African-American or Latina. However, data published by the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST, 2006) indicate that these women are less than 3% of the faculty at 4-year colleges and universities. The NAS Gathering Storm report clearly documented the need to develop a strong and diverse STEM workforce to remain competitive, a more recent report from the National Academy of Sciences entitled Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America’s Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads provides some guidelines, strategies and best practices to increase the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM careers (NAS, 2010). It is clear that minority-serving institutions play a prominent role in providing diverse students who pursue graduate degrees. As an example, of the top 25 institutions that produce African American Doctorates in Natural Sciences and Engineering from 2002-2006 (NSF, 2009) 15 were HBCUs and all of the top 10 were HBCUs. Thus ADVANCE PIs and representatives of HBCUs and other minority serving institutions have complementary roles to play in advancing the overall goals of increasing diversity and moving toward gender equity in STEM. Including both audiences in the 2011 workshop accomplished our goals with added outcomes of: 1. Providing opportunities to highlight how each can shape the career of future STEM professionals and promote the full inclusion of women in STEM careers. 2. Developing significant partnerships among relevant organizations, including academic institutions, professional societies, and individual researchers. 3. Highlighting sustainable best practices. We were successful attracting a higly diverse audience to this workshop, and responses from participants were positive. We have continued to engage new participants and stakeholders in order to build a robust network.
