San Diego State University and the University of California San Diego have partnered to improve mentorship, sponsorship, networking, and institutional and disciplinary leadership capacity for women and other underrepresented minority faculty in STEM. Our Multi-Campus Transformation and Equity Network (MCTEN) will focus on transformative interventions that create and elevate a robust cross-campus network of faculty who will cement existing change, catalyze new efforts, and establish southern California as a regional center for diversity, inclusion and excellence in STEM. Adopting small group, network and community-building approaches, with a specific focus on intersectionality, MCTEN will create lasting intra and inter institutional connections to support meaningful and sustainable change in STEM fields, including sciences and engineering, and the academy. In San Diego, this regional transformation is critical in order to take full advantage of the innovation and research excellence from ethnically, racially and gender diverse faculty, and to adequately serve the students in the San Diego region who meet the critical STEM workforce needs of the nation.
MCTEN will bring innovative applications of documented and effective ADVANCE interventions to a multi-campus, regional network, using insights about organizational change drawn from small-group theory. We will also draw from network science, using networking, network development, and mentoring to reduce negative impacts of the lived experiences of isolation and stress reported by women and URM faculty in STEM departments. This partnership, which brings together California’s university systems in a region with demographics that reflect national trends, will demonstrate how ADVANCE interventions across campuses in a region can support and empower URM women faculty and can provide conditions needed for all scholars to thrive.
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 faculty in academic institutions. Organizational barriers that inhibit equity may exist in policies, processes, practices, and the organizational culture and climate. ADVANCE "Partnership" awards provide support to collaborations among STEM professional societies and academic and non-academic non-profit organizations designed to broaden the implementation of evidence-based equity strategies and have a national or regional reach.
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.
