Building Support for Faculty Women of Color in STEM (original) (raw)

Supporting women’s research in predominantly undergraduate institutions: Experiences with a National Science Foundation ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Award

Frontiers in Psychology

This paper describes the Gender Equity Project (GEP) at Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY), funded by the U. S. NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Award (ITA) program. ADVANCE supports system-level strategies to promote gender equity in the social and natural sciences, but has supported very few teaching-intensive institutions. Hunter College is a teaching-intensive institution in which research productivity among faculty is highly valued and counts toward tenure and promotion. We created the GEP to address the particular challenges that faculty, especially White women and faculty of color, face in maintaining research programs and advancing in their careers at teaching-intensive institutions. During the course of the ADVANCE award, its centerpiece was the Sponsorship Program, a multifaceted paid mentorship/sponsorship program that paired each participant with a successful scholar in her discipline. It offered extensive professional development opportunit...

A Program Aimed toward Inclusive Excellence for Underrepresented Undergraduate Women in the Sciences

CBE life sciences education, 2017

Created to foster inclusive excellence, Smith College's Achieving Excellence in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science (AEMES) Scholars program provides early faculty-mentored research opportunities and other programming as a way to foster success in academic outcomes for underrepresented women in science. Using academic record data, we compared Scholars' outcomes over time with those of underrepresented students before program launch and to relevant peer comparison groups. Since its launch, AEMES Scholars have achieved significantly higher gateway life sciences course grade point averages (GPAs), rates of persistence in life and natural sciences, and participation in natural sciences advanced research relative to baseline. Gains for Scholars in gateway course GPA eliminated the significant gap that previously existed between science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-underrepresented and other students, whereas gains in natural sciences persistence now has Scho...

Partnered Research Experiences for Junior Faculty at Minority-Serving Institutions Enhance Professional Success

Cell Biology Education, 2013

Scientific workforce diversity is critical to ensuring the realization of our national research goals and minority-serving institutions play a vital role in preparing undergraduate students for science careers. This paper summarizes the outcomes of supporting career training and research practices by faculty from teaching-intensive, minority-serving institutions. Support of these faculty members is predicted to lead to: 1) increases in the numbers of refereed publications, 2) increases in federal grant funding, and 3) a positive impact on professional activities and curricular practices at their home institutions that support student training. The results presented show increased productivity is evident as early as 1 yr following completion of the program, with participants being more independently productive than their matched peers in key areas that serve as measures of academic success. These outcomes are consistent with the goals of the Visiting Professorship Program to enhance ...

The Heavy Lifting of Diversity: A Need for Scholar Administrators

Technological innovation and new economic terrain of the twenty-first century has called for higher education to reexamine how interdisciplinary ethnic studies and minority serving programs are positioned in the twenty-first century. This essay considers the utility of spaces like Black Studies departments and programs like the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship within the structure of Liberal Arts education today from the vantage a recent graduate. In the wake increasing hostility towards minority students and unfavorable media coverage of incidents on campus, colleges and universities must consider how rolling back minority-focused academic and programmatic offerings alongside dramatic increases in contingent faculty and administrative staff hiring has left cultural voids. As Liberal Arts educators grapple with narrowing budget constraints and changing campus climates, the call for higher education employees who understand why disciplinary and programmatic offerings are tied to campus climate, and how to use such resources, grows louder. Scholar Administrators, in their ability to straddle the historic dividing line between faculty and staff, can help usher in a type of diversity that allows each student, faculty, and staff person to bear witness to the humanity in others, which ultimately is the heavy lifting of diversity.

Journal of Diversity in Higher Education

In this phenomenological investigation we used qualitative research methodology to examine the experiences of 8 African American women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduate programs at 1 predominantly White university (PWU) in the South. Much of the current research in this area uses quantitative methods and only yields descriptive statistical information. By using qualitative methods, we sought to add significant context to currently available literature about the experiences of African American women in STEM graduate programs at PWUs. We conducted semistructured interviews with research participants. Additionally, participants completed a demographic questionnaire to give us more information about their backgrounds. We analyzed these sources of data to help understand participant experiences. Verbatim quotes from participant interviews were used to highlight experiences and give voice to an often silenced student population in graduate STEM education. Results indicated that participants experienced racial microaggressions, low self-efficacy, and a lack of institutional support while pursuing STEM graduate degrees at this PWU. We offer suggestions about ways issues revealed by participants might be addressed by PWU university personnel. Attention to these issues could make the experiences for African American women more positive while pursuing graduate STEM degrees.

Voices from Within: The Academic Experiences of Minority Scholars at a Midwest Research University

2009

The climate and culture within academic institutions has become a topic of conversation among scholars. This article focuses on the inclusion of historically excluded groups of people in academia, particularly black and Latino/as. Minority scholars’ presence had been limited due to past discriminatory policies and practices, but policies have changed, and minority scholars are gaining entry into academia. Using critical race theory (CRT), this study adds to scholarship by having black and Latino/as faculty members "name their own reality" as they provide narratives about their experiences in a predominately white urban research university, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). Using a 15question, open-ended interview guide, an online survey, and personal interviews, data was collected from 30 minority faculty members. How do department climate, area of research interest, and tenure status affect the workplace experiences of black and Latino/a faculty at UWM?