Jamie Ward - US grants

The project team seeks to significantly advance organizational change for gender equity in STEM, particularly in computing and engineering academic professions. Recent data indicates that 26% of tenured faculty in STEM are women, which dwindles further when specifically looking at engineering and computing faculty (17%). For this project, the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) will partner with the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN) and the Aspire Alliance to address the systemic barriers women face in computing and engineering academic workplaces. This project seeks to leverage collective impact practices and directly enhance the experiences and career opportunities of intersectionally diverse women in computing and engineering academic workplaces nationally. The approach is by unifying organizations that collaboratively provide resources to address systemic and structural change and targeting policies, practices, and norms in computing and engineering academic workplaces. The project aims to raise awareness, and increase the adoption of effective, research-based diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) change efforts among higher education administrators, faculty, and staff, who then become institutional change leaders. The project team plans to adapt evidence-based resources and programs to better—and more comprehensively—address systemic issues related to recruiting and retaining intersectionally diverse women in computing and engineering workplaces at multiple institutional levels (institution, college, department, program).<br/><br/>The primary goal of this project is to lay the foundation for the creation and widespread utilization of a first-of-its-kind, scalable software decision support platform specifically designed to empower computing and engineering departments to implement systemic, sustainable approaches to creating inclusive cultures in the academic workplace. Working together, the partner organizations seek to 1) integrate their evidence-based resource collections; 2) curate these resources into sub-collections aligned with the NCWIT Academic Workplace Systemic Change Model; 3) build out and scale an easy-to-use online platform, which embeds the curated resource sub-collections, to guide computing and engineering departments through the process of developing strategic and intersectional approaches for addressing systemic barriers to creating inclusive cultures; and 4) deploy a guided, community-based professional development and strategic planning experience for computing and engineering departments. The project and collaborative infrastructure plans are based on established theories of organizational change and relevant research. The project team seeks to utilize insights generated through targeted focus groups and a community-based professional development program to enable the creation and refinement of contextually relevant, easily adopted resources that can be shared on a national scale. Sound quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods will be utilized throughout the project.<br/><br/>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 "Partnership" awards provide support for projects that scale-up evidence-based systemic change strategies to enhance gender equity for STEM faculty regionally or nationally.<br/><br/>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 "Partnership" awards provide support for projects that scale-up evidence based systemic change strategies to enhance gender equity for STEM faculty regionally or nationally.<br/><br/>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.