The NSF ADVANCE program is designed to foster gender equity through a focus on the identification and elimination of organizational barriers that impede the full participation and advancement of diverse STEM faculty in academic institutions. Organizational barriers that inhibit equity may exist in policies, processes, practices, and the organizational culture and climate. ADVANCE "Adaptation" awards provide support for the adaptation and adoption of evidence-based strategies to academic and non-academic non-profit organizations.
The Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) ADVANCE Adaptation project will produce systemic change within WPI by implementing activities designed to: 1) clarify promotion criteria and processes for both tenure track (TT) and non-tenure track (NTT) faculty; 2) mitigate implicit biases related to gender, identity, workload, forms of scholarship, and faculty work; and 3) institutionalize a system of ADVANCE coaches in each academic unit to guide mid-career faculty toward promotion. WPI data analysis indicates that STEM faculty gender equity issues are attributable to implicit biases and a "foggy climate," a research-based metaphor for ambiguity in promotion processes, in valuing of different types of work, and in work distribution that disadvantages women. The process and outcomes of this work will be disseminated to multiple audiences who can be change agents at other institutions, including STEM Deans and Chief Academic Officers in the Association of Independent Technological Universities, and through WPI's Institute on Project-Based Learning which reaches more than one hundred educators at dozens of other institutions.
This project has the potential to advance knowledge by serving as a case study of Boyer-inspired promotion reform aimed at addressing gender inequity and marginalization of intersectional identities at WPI. WPI is an institution that integrates project-based learning into their undergraduate curriculum which is a factor that may impact STEM faculty equity issues in unique ways that this project will help to identify and understand. For example, faculty promotion systems are a perceived barrier for other institutions interested in increasing the use of project-based and community-engaged learning. A combination of formative and summative evaluation, with quantitative and qualitative methods, will determine the extent to which interventions are effective and why. Overall, the project will provide increased knowledge regarding mechanisms to decrease systemic biases.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
