ADVANCE Leadership Award: Collaborative Proposal - FORWARD to Professorship

University Of Oklahoma Norman Campus, Norman OK

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Oklahoma, the George Washington University and Gallaudet University join together for a three-year collaborative effort to enhance, present and assess the FORWARD to Professorship workshop for pre-tenured women in science, engineering and mathematics (SEM). The workshop has been developed and presented three times under a previous ADVANCE Leadership award. The need persists: each year the workshops are oversubscribed and participants report satisfaction from, and enthusiasm for, the workshop experience. Between 87 and 99 percent of the participants rated the sessions as good or excellent in this last year (2005) and 100% of the participants said they would recommend it to their colleagues. In the next three years, the collaborative team plans: __ to continue the workshop, __ to enhance specific elements of the workshop such as the negotiation segment, __ to extend the coverage to include a new component entitled MIND THE GAP in which they will concentrate on women who have had or are planning a SEM career interruption, __ to develop a support structure beyond the workshop, and __ to do more detailed evaluation and assessment. __ Finally, the co-PIs will work with their respective institutions to create lasting change with respect to diversity in the faculty ranks. The intellectual merit of the project lies in the development of cross-disciplinary skills training methods and materials for women (and men) contemplating, or in, tenure-track faculty positions, the creation of a community of women with similar high level training in SEM disciplines that can be reached and studied over a number of years, and a study of the situation for women in SEM career interruptions. The broader impacts of the project are extensive. The project aims to broaden the participation of women, minorities and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in the faculty ranks, thereby contributing to the national need to diversify the SEM workforce. The project provides access to role models in these populations as well as a support network, both of which will enhance success rates in the academy. This increased success will in turn influence the student population in SEM disciplines. The project also influences and creates systemic change in institutions of higher education by informing the incoming classes of faculty, as well as deans and chairs through their participation in the workshop and in the findings. Graduate and undergraduate students will also learn from working on the project and be encouraged to pursue a path leading to professorship.