International Workshop on Connecting Woman Faculty in Sustainable Building Research (WISB) Location: Dalian, China Date: July 2018

Drexel University, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

Sustainable Building research, which focuses on improving indoor environmental quality, reducing building energy consumption and overall life cycle cost, as well as promoting a better human-building relationship, has grown significantly in the past decade. This is an area of research that requires collaboration among many disciplines including engineering, computer science, social sciences and architecture. However, due to the STEM gender gap, woman faculty may be isolated and find it difficult to identify, network, and collaborate with other researchers from different disciplines. This lack of effective multi-disciplinary networking opportunities among researchers significantly restricts the growth of sustainable building innovations, delays the career mobility of woman faculty, and can steer away promising women researchers from this area. This international workshop aims to engage woman faculty worldwide in sustainable building research 1) to provide a networking opportunity that will promote future international and multidisciplinary research collaborations; 2) to identify the challenges and gaps that affect woman faculty's success in this area and to seek potential solutions, and 3) to explore future research directions. The workshop will offer a diversity of activities, including ice-breaking presentations on future research directions, round table sessions on mini-proposal writing and road-map discussions, career panel discussions, and other collaborative and networking opportunities. One pre-workshop and two post- workshop surveys will be conducted to understand the immediate and longer-term impacts of the workshop. Engaging international participation in the workshop will not only introduce viewpoints from many different cultures, but also increase the opportunities for the U.S. participants to develop potential international collaborations. The workshop will 1) Identify the needs, research gaps and roadmaps for emerging research directions in sustainable building research; 2) Provide an international and multidisciplinary collaborative platform for women in sustainable building research to generate novel ideas and develop long-term collaborative relationships; and 3) Advance understanding of how to promote women in sustainable building research by identifying and addressing career needs, challenges, and roadblocks through panel discussions and survey studies. The workshop will focus on promoting women in sustainable building research by 1) providing international and multidisciplinary networking opportunities for woman faculty, especially those at the beginning of their academic careers and near-graduation PHD students; 2) developing an understanding of how to support woman faculty to overcome the career roadblocks; 3) building rapport among women in sustainable building research; and 4) support and encourage woman faculty to pursue more leadership roles. Promoting woman faculty in sustainable buildings will not only stimulate growth and innovation in this area but also attract more women to enter engineering and encourage women to pursue more leadership roles. The findings from this workshop will also help the community to develop better design and operation practices for sustainable buildings and therefore benefit the society at large.