ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Award: Investing in Leadership Potential and Faculty Opportunities at Brown University

Brown University, Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of the Institutional Transformation Award Program at Brown University is to increase the level of opportunity for faculty and implement mechanisms to protect and nurture faculty success. The program will provide transparent formal programs to provide the ingredients for success often available informally, to guarantee access for women faculty. This will ensure that once recruited women faculty will have a working environment that will allow them to achieve their full potential and ultimately assume positions of power. The ADVANCE program at Brown will include 1) a leadership program for women science faculty that will help them to develop peer networks and assume leadership positions, 2) a faculty development program for all faculty part of which will be a mentoring program designed to create a cadre of faculty informed about gender equity issues, 3) a department chair training program aimed at improving departmental climate and making departmental policies fair and transparent, and 4) a visiting scholar program that will bring experts to Brown to design model programs for the above. Broader Impacts: One of the goals of the program is to demonstrate that providing access to formal transparent faculty development programs ameliorates the problems of hidden bias and evens the playing field between male and female faculty. The program is expected to have the following specific outcomes: 1) reduce faculty attrition, including attrition of women and minority faculty; 2) increase the number of women promoted to full professor; 3) decrease the time in rank of associate professors; 4) increase the number of women rising to leadership positions in either academic administration or areas of scholarly leadership; 5) prevent mid-career burnout by encouraging collaborative projects and brokering opportunities for science faculty to become involved in such projects; 6) increase the amount of funded research by alerting faculty to potential opportunities. All of these potential outcomes will provide a return on investment for academic institutions. Scientific Merit: Collecting indicator data for the proposed program and disseminating it to the community will represent a significant contribution to understanding the barriers that inhibit the advancement of women scientists. The goal of the ADVANCE program is to contribute to the development of a national science and engineering academic workforce that includes the full participation of women in all levels of faculty and academic/administration, particularly at the senior academic ranks, through the transformation of institutional practices, policies, climate and culture.