Low Cost High Impact: Suggestions for Warming the Campus Climate for Women

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Low Cost High Impact Suggestions for Warming the
Campus Climate for Women

• Professor Christine Hult
• Utah State University
• PI Utah State ADVANCE

Funding provided by National Science Foundation
ADVANCE Program SBE-0244922
http//www.nsf.gov/home/crssprgm/advance http//a
dvance.usu.edu
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The Problem
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NSF ADVANCE Overview

• The Purpose of NSF ADVANCE is to increase the
  participation of women in the scientific and
  engineering workforce.
• The Problem Significant increases in women STEM
  PhDs, but they are leaving academics.
• Our strategy To address issues of equity through
  improving the effectiveness of all faculty
  members
• Climate changes have been shown to have a
  differential impact on women and minorities.

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Organizational Change Overview

• Incrementaltwo steps forward, one step back
• Working with a variety of entities
• President Provost, Deans
• Sponsored Programs, VP Research
• Tri-Council for Womens Programs
• AA/EO, Human Resources
• Faculty Senate
• STEM departments and department heads
• Individual Faculty Members

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Suggestions for Warming the Climate on your Campus

• Some low cost high impact suggestions
• (Project now in the sixth no-cost extension
  year)
• 1. Using Data to Drive Change
• 2. Improving Policies and Procedures
• 3. Supporting Faculty

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1. Using Data to Drive Change

• National Local Data
• Recruitment Data
• Promotion Data
• Retention Data

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American Association of University Professors
Gender Equity Indicators

• http//www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/research/geneq200
  6.htm
• Indicator 1. Employment status ( women)
• Indicator 2. Tenure status (full time
  instructional)
• Indicator 3. Full Professor rank ( women full)
• Indicator 4. Average womans salary (as of
  average mans salary)
• Break down institutions data at college
  level.

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Interviews of Women STEM Faculty and Matched Male
Colleagues
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NSF Data Indicators

• Vary in difficulty of collection and usefulness.
• Space use analysis is only useful if the
  institution is large enough.
• Hiring and retention analyses need to be done at
  the college level across multiple years.
• Promotion analyses need to be done at the
  institutional level across multiple years.

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Cleaning Institutional Data

• Our experience - lots of errors in central data.
• When the number of women is small, the errors can
  have large impacts.
• Track individual faculty by names or identifiable
  code.
• Find sympathetic administrators to get access to
  institutional data.
• Find ways to institutionalize NSF Data Indicators.

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Recruitment Data

• Data
• Utah State had fewer STEM faculty women than
  national averages.
• In the 5 years before ADVANCE 17 of STEM hires
  were women. Women made up 34 of national
  applicant pool.

• Low cost strategies
• Formation of SERT Science and Engineering
  Recruitment Team
• Development of Hiring for Excellence DVD
• More attention to Dual Career hiring policy
• Increased involvements of Deans in hiring
  decisions in some colleges

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Improvement in Recruitment
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Hiring Compared to Availability
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Promotion Data

• Data
• At the start of ADVANCE, Utah State had fewer
  full professors than peer institutions.
• Utah State had fewer women full professors in the
  STEM fields than national averages.

• Low cost strategies
• Workshops for Associate to Full professors
• Associate to Full transition mini-grants
• Promotion committees for associate professors
• Some deans began meeting with each associate
  professor to discuss promotion

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The Cost of Not Retaining Faculty

• Data
• Over a 3 year period Utah State spent 3.67 M on
  start up packages to replace faculty who left for
  other institutions
• Over a 5 year period 22 of women and 13 of men
  STEM faculty left for another institution.

• Low cost strategies
• ½ time Vice Provost for Diversity Development
  (faculty mentoring and retention)
• Direct some merit increases toward retention
• Greater attention to dual career hiring

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Improvement in Non-Retirement Attrition
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Increase in the Number of STEM Women Faculty
Annual Growth rate ADVANCE 9
Annual Growth rate Pre-ADVANCE 2.5
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2. Reviewing Policies

• Systematic review of policies identified by women
  in interviews as barriers or sources of
  dissatisfaction
• Dual career policy
• Promotion committees
• Tenure and promotion policies/guidelines
• Ombudspersons for TP meetings
• Work-life policies

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Transparency

• Increase transparency of processes.
• This is critical in breaking down the us versus
  them phenomenon wherein faculty see the
  administration as their enemy.
• When decision processes such as resource
  allocation or promotion are unclear or hidden,
  distrust increases.
• Trust can be regained with improved transparency.

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Committee Appointments

• Evaluate committee appointments. Committee
  appointments often disproportionately affect
  women.
• Avoid the token woman syndrome.
• That is, having a woman on every committee.
• Consider using a spreadsheet.
• Include departmental/college/university
  committees.

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Dual-Career Policies

• Create and publicize dual-career policies.
• Our study of university policies on websites.
  
• Have policies in place and readily available.
• This will improve placement in academia of
  women faculty with PhD/Scientist partners

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Work-Life Issues

• Make improvements in work-life issues.
• Work-life policies seem to be especially
  important for women. Policies that can improve
  work-life
• Paid care-giving leave
• On-site child care
• Tenure extensions and/or transitional support to
  maintain or restart research following major life
  events
• Part-time or job-sharing options for tenure-track
  faculty

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3. Supporting All Faculty

• Promote networking
• Celebrate small wins
• Communicate (10 times more than you think would
  be necessary)
• Provide for modest seed grants
• Offer brown-bag workshops
• Offer individual coaching on TP
• Open all programs to men and women

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Improve Research Collaborations

• Isolation Women at MIT and Utah State both
  reported feelings of isolation.
• Networking Our data suggest women do not realize
  that resources are obtained through networking.
• Team-work and collaboration on research Can
  improve the job satisfaction and productivity of
  all faculty.

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Collaborative Seed Grants

• Provide modest funding for collaborative seed
  grants (5-8k)
• Must be multi-disciplinary
• Must include at least one female from STEM
• Must target a specific grant or agency
• Institutionalized through VPR
• Impressive results on follow-up funding after one
  year of VPR central seed grant funding

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VPR Funding Results

• Of the VPR grant PIs and co-PIs, 23 were female
  and 25 were male.
• Of the 48 VPR grant PIs and co-PIs, five received
  direct ADVANCE support.
• Of the 48 VPR grant PIs and co-PIs, 16 came
  from departments with whom ADVANCE had worked.

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Transitional Support Grants

• Small pool of funds for emergency transitions
  such as illness in family
• Have partly institutionalized as care-giving
  with modified duties policy
• Small pool of funds for transitioning from
  associate to full
• Have partly institutionalized with transition
  grants in some colleges

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Significant Gains through ADVANCE

• From 1996-2002, USU had to hire 15.5 faculty
  members (men and women) to increase the number of
  women faculty in STEM by 1.
• From 2003-2007, USU only had to hire 4 faculty
  members (men and women) to increase the number of
  women faculty in STEM by 1.
• This is a function of improving the of new
  women hires and retention rates for women.

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Summary

• Institutional data can effect climate change.
• Data focus the discussion on specific issues.
• Interested administrators used institutional data
  in decision making and to justify decisions.
• Improvement in policies improves climate.
• Supporting all faculty improves climate.

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