ADVANCE Partnerships for Adaptation, Implementation and Dissemination: Partnership of Women in Engineering, Research and Science - PoWERS

Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX

Investigators

Abstract

Texas Tech University (TTU) and Texas Tech Health Science Center (HSC) have partnered to advance the status of women faculty in engineering, science, medicine and research by addressing specific problems identified by task force studies and administrators at both institutions with "best practices" from proven ADVANCE- supported programs. These programs are being implemented in the eight departments in the College of Engineering (COE), four science departments in the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), two departments in the School of Pharmacy (SOP), and four departments in the School of Medicine (SOM). These programs include a comprehensive recruitment plan, two mentoring programs, the third-year review, and an improved exit interview process. The mentoring programs are important because they enable the small number of experienced women to reach more junior women across the 74,000 sq miles of the TTU system. The recruitment program will train search committees on the value and effective approaches to a robust search process that results in a pool of highly qualified men and women in the final candidate pool. The third-year review will lead to better preparedness on the part of the faculty candidate for tenure and promotion; and the exit interviews will uncover gender-related factors that contribute to faculty leaving the university. All the ADVANCE programs adapted for use at TTU and HSC will be evaluated using both qualitative and quantitative methods throughout the award period, thus revisions of the programs can be made pro-actively. Further, an advisory board with internal and external members, a concept adopted from University of Texas at El-Paso's ADVANCE project, is being used to provide timely and continuous guidance throughout the project period. The intellectual merit of this project lies in creating an integrated and comprehensive approach to improving the numbers of women faculty in engineering, science, medicine, and research at TTU and HSC to uncover the root causes relevant to recruitment and retention. The broader impacts of this project include advances in understanding effective recruitment and retention practices to help create the next generation of leaders in science and engineering.