ADVANCE Adaptation: SF State TRANSFORMS - Advancing Equity in Faculty Workload and Professional Development

San Francisco State University, San Francisco CA

Investigators

Abstract

San Francisco State University (SF State) will reduce disparities in the advancement of women faculty in STEM by adapting initiatives to transform SF State campus policies and practices. The project builds on a conceptual framework that asserts that intersectional dimensions of racial and gender inequity and injustice create a system of power with advantages and disadvantages that underlie the structure of academic institutions and negatively impacts the advancement of women, specifically those who are underrepresented because of race, ethnicity and other social categories. SF State is a teaching intensive, primarily undergraduate public university classified as a Hispanic-Serving Institution and eligible to participate in federal Asian American, Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution programs. This ADVANCE Adaptation project builds on prior work done by SF State through an ADVANCE IT-Catalyst project. The project is designed to mitigate the systemic factors at SF State that create inequities, by targeting three interrelated institutional problem areas: 1) inequitable service workload that taxes gender and racial/ethnic underrepresented (UR) faculty disproportionately, 2) lack of institutional structures to support professional scholarship practices that empower collectives; and 3) lack of advocacy and structure to mitigate the role of implicit bias and the associated intersectional gender and race assumptions in university structures. The project will implement three initiatives adapted from proven efforts in higher education to address similar problem areas: 1) SF State VALUES will focus on mitigating practices in academic departments that result in the inequitable allocation of service through the development of workload dashboards; 2) SF State EXPANDS will take on the related challenge of enhancing faculty scholarship and professional development by fostering mechanisms for collaboration and interdisciplinary faculty networks designed to support, seed and sustain scholarship; and 3) SF State RESTORES will address the underlying need for increased advocacy and commitment to reducing gender and racial/ethnic inequity by establishing a Faculty Equity Fellows Program, and developing processes to address biases that affect all faculty by creating a structure to address complaints that do not rise to the level of Title IX reporting. 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 "Adaptation" awards provide support for the adaptation and adoption of evidence-based strategies to academic, non-profit institution of higher education as well as non-academic, non-profit organizations. 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.