ADVANCE Partnership: Empowering scientists to transform workplace climate through the ADVANCEGeo community-based intervention program

University Of California - Merced, Merced CA

Investigators

Abstract

The ADVANCEGeo Partnership is designed to address harassment in STEM working and learning environments. The project includes interventions at the individual and organizational levels. Organizational strategies include the development of ethical codes of conduct that frame harassment, bullying, and discrimination as scientific misconduct with STEM professional societies. Training for individual STEM faculty and academic leaders focuses on empowerment with knowledge and strategies to create workplaces and learning environments that are anti-harassment by design. The project leverages collaborations with professional associations for nationwide impact and builds on prior work (NSF 1725879) with professional societies. The original project focused on geosciences, and earth and space sciences, but expanded to other STEM disciplines including the ecological and biological sciences. The network of partners and collaborators aims to engage and support a large cohort of trainers and expand the program’s reach into multiple STEM disciplines. The goal of the project is to train STEM stakeholders and leaders and co-develop organizational strategies to improve academic workplaces for all STEM faculty. The proposers have extensive experience from prior work in this area and have earned a national reputation for their workshops which are in high demand. Ultimately, harassment-free workplaces and learning environments are beneficial to everyone in those places and leads to more productivity and retention. This effort is particularly important in academic workplaces for the STEM faculty as well as the undergraduate and graduate students being mentored and trained in these environments. The initiatives developed and implemented in this project are evidence-based and informed by the relevant research literature. 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.