draft – do not distribute · initiatives targeted to women; (b) top-down leadership reform...

DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

Institutional Context and Data

The University of Cincinnati (UC) is a public research-extensive university ranked 25th among peer public institutions by the National Science Foundation and characterized by the Carnegie Commission for its “Very High Activity”. UC was named as one of the nation's best institutions for undergraduate education for the fifth straight year (Princeton's Review, 2012). UC and affiliated institutions increased research grant holdings over the past year by 15% with $443M in new external research funding, and by 20% to $298M for the core institution (UC). The federal government was the primary source of funding at 89%, with most of the remainder from industry ($15M), the state of Ohio ($5M), and other foundational grants ($11M). As UC strives to become a top tier research university assessed by aggressive benchmarks and goals, women STEM faculty will play a significant role in achieving this elite status. The work proposed here will facilitate the success of UC through a comprehensive program that will broaden participation and enhance the careers of its women faculty in STEM to establish UC as a desired destination for women and minorities.

UC currently enrolls 42,421 students. Overall, women students outnumber men at the UG level (54%) and in graduate programs (60%) but not in professional programs (42%). Women represent 43% of STEM UG enrollments and 41% of graduate enrollments, although there is wide variation among programs, with the highest percentage in A&S and the lowest in Engineering and Applied Science. While not a central aim of our proposal, increasing the number of women STEM faculty at UC should have a salutary effect on the representation of women students in STEM programs.

UC includes 1,739 full-time faculty of whom 44% are women. However, women faculty are substantially underrepresented in STEM in Engineering & Applied Sciences (10%), Arts & Sciences (29%), and Medicine (28%) (see Table 1 below). Further, as academic rank increases, the representation of women in STEM declines. These data demonstrate the compelling need for transformation. Institutional change at UC will be most successful if it is a dynamic process integrating programming and policy change to improve the pipeline and climate through (a) bottom up initiatives targeted to women; (b) top-down leadership reform initiatives; and (c) through advocacy and accountability initiatives that coordinate the top-down and bottom-up approaches. The latter is a new element to this proposal and represents a “guiding coalition” (Kotter, 1990) of change agents across various levels of faculty and administrators. These groups are often critical to successful change in private and public organizations (Barton & Kempling, 2009) and in social experiments in overcoming prejudice (Kotter, 2007, 1990; Cunningham, 1993). UC President Williams’ strategic plan (UC 2019) stresses the importance of increasing the diversity of the student body and faculty. With the strong commitment from Provost Ono and President Williams to sustain the efforts we propose here, we are poised to begin the transformation of UC to an environment that understands, proactively develops, recognizes, and values the talent within our women STEM faculty. We will accomplish transformation by creating a pipeline that begins with the balanced and transparent recruitment of women STEM scientists, targeting first the areas of greatest need where women faculty are clearly underrepresented. LEAF will initiate programs that address career challenges through early-, mid- and senior-career stages to ensure that women STEM scientists are supported through their academic trajectory and achieve maximal career impact. Critical features of our proposal will be the use of structured learning programs (year-long workshop series) coupled with learning communities (LCs) that not only introduce necessary skills but also help women situate themselves within social and professional networks that can provide additional support and that will serve as reference groups and supports at earlier stages of their careers. A second critical feature will be the development of unit-level logic models of desired change (logic modeling is a tool in program planning and evaluation which explicates the connections between program activities and intended outcomes; it will be described in more detail later). This feature acknowledges the great diversity among units in starting conditions while still emphasizing that every unit will be expected to make specific plans that contribute to the proposal’s aims. We realize that this will be an incremental, iterative, and sometimes difficult process, but one essential to successful transformation. We will focus on STEM research faculty in the College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) and in selected units in the College of Medicine (COM) and the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). These colleges vary widely in how the STEM scientists work, the relative emphasis on research and instruction, and the culture in regard to women. To set the scene, we provide data below from the 2010-2011 academic year:


Table 1. Gender, Ethnicity, Rank Statistics for UC faculty in STEM Units (2010).

Faculty % Female Assistant % Female

Associate % Female

Full % Female

URM* Female

Asian Female

A&S Anthropology 11 55% 75% 0% 0% 1 Biological Sciences 32 34% 30% 40% 33% 1

Chemistry 25 16% 20% 14% 15% 1

Geography 13 23% 25% 33% 14% 1 Geology 12 8% 100% 0 0 Mathematical Sciences 49 24% 38% 33% 14% 6 Physics 22 9% 0 0 10% 1 Psychology 34 56% 77% 50% 36% 3 2

Total 198 29% 42% 27% 19% 4 12 CEAS Advanced Structures 14 7% 100% 0 0 Aerospace Systems 21 4% 0 0 11%

Electronics and Computing Systems

36 6% 0 8% 4% 1

Computer Science 7 14% 0 0 20% Dynamic Systems 35 11% 20% 14% 7% 2 Energy, Environmental, Biological and Medical Engineering

38 16% 25% 30% 0 2

Total 151 10% 20% 12% 5% 1 4 CMED Anesthesiology 6 17% 0 50% 0 1 Cancer and Cell Biology 21 38% 0 80% 44%

Dermatology 3 67% 100% 50% Emergency Medicine 2 Environmental Health 39 31% 25% 38% 29% 2 Family Medicine 2 100% 100% 100% Hoxworth Blood Center 3 Internal Medicine 28 29% 29% 30% 25% Molecular and Cellular Physiology

14 14% 20% 33% 0

Molecular Genetics 23 13% 0 0 20% Neurology and Neurosciences

7 29% 33% 100% 0

Ob-Gyn 3 33% 100% 0 0 1 Ophthalmology 6 50% 75% 0 0 1 Pathology and Lab Medicine

16 44% 60% 50% 29% 4

Pediatrics 2 50% 0 0 100% Pharmacology and Cell Biophysics

14 14% 0 20% 14%

Psychiatry 17 35% 57% 20% 20% Public Health Services 4 0% Radiology and Radiation Oncology

3 33% 0 50%

Surgery 6 17% 0 0 33% Total 219 28% 33% 34% 24% 1 8

*URM= Underrepresented minority CEAS has 151 full time faculty members organized into six units. Nearly all members of the

faculty are tenure-track, full-time STEM engineers who, in addition to their research mission, share a commitment to UG and graduate education. Faculty members in the college generate about $28M in new research funding annually. STEM women faculty represent only 10% of the faculty of CEAS, with the various units ranging from 4% (Aerospace Systems) to 16% (EEB&ME).

COM has nearly 800 faculty members, of which 219 are considered STEM scientists for this proposal (i.e., they typically hold a Ph.D. and research constitutes their primary job responsibility, with some graduate teaching, but no clinical work). These STEM scientists work in 20 departments with diverse research specialties. Most are tenured or are on the tenure track and generate $169M a year in new research funding. A challenge unique to COM is that many of the STEM scientists are in units containing clinical faculty (e.g., Internal Medicine), and in some units STEM scientists are a small


proportion of the faculty. While each STEM scientist is a member of a unit, many identify closely with interdisciplinary graduate degree programs (e.g., Neuroscience).

A&S has seven STEM departments: Anthropology, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Geology, Geography, Mathematical Sciences, Physics, and Psychology. These units contain 198 faculty members who account for virtually all of the college’s $16M in external funding. Women STEM scientists vary from 8% in Geology to 56% in Psychology.

STEM Survey Data: We conducted another survey of STEM scientists in autumn 2011. The instrument was almost identical to our 2009 survey, which was adapted from surveys at the University of Illinois-Chicago and the University of Michigan. We obtained responses from about one-third of the STEM scientists. We focus here only on the more striking findings.

Women were twice as likely to be strongly dissatisfied with their jobs as men, but were less than half as likely to report that they never considered leaving UC. Women more often started their UC careers in the bottom tenure-track rank than did men and were more often very dissatisfied with the negotiation of their hiring package. Women rated themselves as less productive relative to peers than did men, and also reported they believed others viewed them as less productive. Men were more likely to report consulting inside and outside of the institution than were women, while women were more likely to report being involved in community work. Women were more likely than men to report being treated with respect by their unit heads, but also reported being less able to voice their opinions. Among STEM scientists without mentors, women were much more likely to believe mentors would help them advance their careers. Differences in views about the usefulness of mentors were small among faculty who had mentors.

Perhaps the most important findings underscoring the need for climate change were as follows. Women were much less likely than men to report that there are enough women in their departments, or that the department has worked to recruit women. Women were more likely to report that their departments have difficulty retaining women than were men, and they were more likely to agree that more women are needed in positions of leadership. Men, in contrast, were more likely to report that their departments had tried to place women in positions of leadership.

Institutional Commitment and Sustainability

The UC senior administration and relevant deans are committed to institutional transformation. This can be seen not only in the representation of top administrators and former administrators on the project staff and advisory boards, but also in the considerable investments that the administration has already made in LEAF. For example, the administration provided funding for the year-long Ready-Set-Go! workshop series which is a model for the kind of workshop programming we will discuss in more detail later. Further, we have worked closely with the provost’s financial planning office and developed a budget proposal that would enable us to sustain LEAF on an on-going basis after NSF funding comes to an end. Finally, another significant aspect of our proposed work is that it will spread logic modeling expertise amongst the academic units and deans’ offices and thereby become incorporated into improved strategic planning processes. Even after the grant period is ended, units will have the expertise to monitor their progress toward their endorsed goals and think creatively about solutions. We anticipate that as our program efforts are successful, new initiatives will be generated during the period of the grant beyond those discussed in our proposal and we will collaborate with our advisory boards to inject these grant-generated ideas into the normal budgeting processes of the institution.

Activities

Our approach to institutional change reflects bottom-up and top-down processes, as well as a coordinated effort to promote innovation and transformation between and across academic and administrative functions through the Accountability and Advocacy Council (AAC; see figure next page). By empowering women and the departments they reside in to create change in collaboration with the senior administration, and by holding all members of the institution accountable, we empower all members of the university to create sustainable change. Thus rather than placing the onus solely on women faculty or the administration for differing aspects of change, we believe a unique component of our proposal is the idea that each goal of the proposal can be approached from two directions: indigenous, faculty-initiated, or bottom-up change and formal, administrative-driven, or top down change, with any tensions created by these different approaches to be worked out in the AAC.

An example of a bottom-up process would be women our learning communities making a collective decision to search for and propose to their units strategies for increasing the number of women who respond to job advertisementstop-down process would be for the provost to direct the deans (and for deans in turn to direct their heads) to identify activities that can be used to increase the number of highly qualified women candidates in hiring pools, either by collecting and sharing local best practices or adopting thembenchmarks (i.e., ADVANCE institutionillustrate, there is no reason why these two approaches up and top-down – need be incompatible with one another.they may not align perfectly or be coordinated perfectly in time. Thus, we propose another unique component AAC, to be headed by current dean AAC provides a forum for open and productive dialogue enhanced collaboration across all levels. model will allow women faculty and administrators from the opportunities the AAC will create for them to have direct, informal (i.e., back-channel) dialogues about STEM women at UC and the various initiatives under way

I. Improve the pipeline for women faculty in STEM by broadening recruitment, hiring, increasing retention, and promoting advancementprogram demonstrates the systemic problem of STEM disciplines. While efforts across disciplines and programs have women, and some STEM departments are approaching critical gap in representation among scientists across all STEM disciplineswomen earn fewer doctorates than menchallenge as bias and inequity continue towomen STEM scientists (e.g., Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose,

Bottom-Up Change: We propose the representation of women. First, series for women and minority women faculty at differing stthese workshops is to (a) empowerto establish a competitive research program; (visibility and stature in their fields and continue their professional successesof senior faculty by giving them opportunitand gaining national and international prominence. gain a voice in the trajectory of their own careersthem; too often leadership development in academe means preparation for administration, but we see it as being equally applicable to leadership as a faculty member, leadership in professional organieven leadership in the community, in addition, of course, to leadership

Each workshop series will include approximately 10 monthly meetings per year and follow a standard interactive format that includes (and topic; (b) an interactive activity designed to develop ideas and problem solving skillsplaying, world café, pair and share)as well as session facilitators, will serve as a resource during

LEAF has already initiated offeringis geared primarily at junior faculty. important skills that are harder to come byaddress common problems that new faculty experience, Institute and Burroughs Wellcome Fund personnel, seeking funding, balancing Initial survey data regarding the first workshop in October 2011 indicates that more than 93% of the STEM women participants rated the workshops as “very good” to “outstanding” in helping them establish


up process would be women in one of a collective decision to search

propose to their units strategies for increasing the number of women who respond to job advertisements. An example of a

down process would be for the provost to direct the deans their heads) to identify activities

that can be used to increase the number of highly qualified , either by collecting and sharing

adopting them from aspirational ADVANCE institutions). As these examples

illustrate, there is no reason why these two approaches – bottom-need be incompatible with one another. But

they may not align perfectly or be coordinated perfectly in time. another unique component of our program, the

, to be headed by current dean Dr. Valerie Hardcastle. The for open and productive dialogue and across all levels. The three-component

and administrators to both gain from the opportunities the AAC will create for them to have direct,

channel) dialogues about STEM women at UC and the various initiatives under way.

pipeline for women faculty in STEM by broadening recruitment, and promoting advancement. The existence of the NSF ADVANCE

the systemic problem of underrepresentation of women and minorities in While efforts across disciplines and programs have helped to improve

women, and some STEM departments are approaching representation equal to men, there is still a critical gap in representation among many STEM departments and for tenured mid

STEM disciplines. This is in part a function of a small pool of available doctorates than men). But, even for women hired, retention

inequity continue to have deleterious effects on many aspects of the lives of Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010; NSF, 2011; Trower and CWe propose two different professional development components First, LEAF will annually sponsor three professional development workshop

for women and minority women faculty at differing stages of their academic careers. empower junior faculty in their early years by providing the skill sets necessary

to establish a competitive research program; (b) engage mid-level faculty in the necessary steps to gain and continue their professional successes; and (c) enhance the

giving them opportunities to strategize about sustaining successful research careeral and international prominence. Through participation in these workshops,

gain a voice in the trajectory of their own careers. The direction of their career development will be up to them; too often leadership development in academe means preparation for administration, but we see it as being equally applicable to leadership as a faculty member, leadership in professional organi

, in addition, of course, to leadership in administration. will include approximately 10 monthly meetings per year and follow a

standard interactive format that includes (a) a short burst of information related to the supporting literature ) an interactive activity designed to develop ideas and problem solving skills

playing, world café, pair and share); and (c) interactive discussion and evaluation. A panel of 2as well as session facilitators, will serve as a resource during each lunch-time session.

ed offering the first of the three workshop series: Ready, Set, Go!. While junior faculty are skilled technically when hired, there are

are harder to come by, yet crucial to a successful academic career. These address common problems that new faculty experience, as identified by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Burroughs Wellcome Fund (2006a; 2006b): establishing a research lab, hiring and manag

balancing teaching and service with research, and managing l survey data regarding the first workshop in October 2011 indicates that more than 93% of the

STEM women participants rated the workshops as “very good” to “outstanding” in helping them establish

pipeline for women faculty in STEM by broadening recruitment, improving The existence of the NSF ADVANCE

and minorities in the helped to improve the situation for

equal to men, there is still a tenured mid- and senior-level

available applicants (i.e., remains a critical

aspects of the lives of Chait, 2002).

professional development components to improve professional development workshop

ages of their academic careers. The aim of faculty in their early years by providing the skill sets necessary

level faculty in the necessary steps to gain ) enhance the impact

sustaining successful research careers workshops, women will

. The direction of their career development will be up to them; too often leadership development in academe means preparation for administration, but we see it as being equally applicable to leadership as a faculty member, leadership in professional organizations,

. will include approximately 10 monthly meetings per year and follow a

information related to the supporting literature ) an interactive activity designed to develop ideas and problem solving skills (i.e., role-

) interactive discussion and evaluation. A panel of 2-3 experts,

Ready, Set, Go!, which when hired, there are other

career. These workshops as identified by the Howard Hughes Medical

establishing a research lab, hiring and managing managing time and stress.

l survey data regarding the first workshop in October 2011 indicates that more than 93% of the STEM women participants rated the workshops as “very good” to “outstanding” in helping them establish


or maintain a successful research program and for usefulness in their future academic endeavors. All indicated strong interest in attending the remaining sessions.

To help pre-tenure STEM women engage in their units, their institutions, their professional organizations, or their communities, the second workshop series will focus on how to align the disparate elements of a career to produce the highest probability of success. For example, how can service in professional organizations be leveraged to heighten visibility that might be useful during tenure review? How can judiciously chosen unit-level, college-level, or university-level service create opportunities for mentoring and visibility? Women STEM scientists going up for tenure need collaboration opportunities, visibility, resources, time, and coaching. This workshop series will, on a practical level, provide them with necessary information and tools relevant to earning reappointment, promotion, and tenure.

For women STEM scientists post-tenure, a third workshop series will focus on maximizing career impact. Underrepresentation of women STEM faculty post tenure is a significant problem at UC. Leadership opportunities abound for these women, but it is our impression that at UC these opportunities are too often narrowly cast in terms of administration. One can just as easily achieve impact in professional organizations, in the public arena, or in the department (e.g., seasoned senior women serving as mentors and as advocates for system change are sorely needed). This workshop series will be about impact: how to commercialize technological contributions, how to lead a national committee or other professional organization, and how to be an effective, influential senior faculty member. While women in all of the workshop series will be expected to find ways to apply their learning to bottom-up change, women in this third workshop series will formally propose, initiate, and report on a change initiative of their choosing, whether in their units, colleges, professional organizations or at the level of the university.

A second program to support bottom up change and improve the pipeline will be LEAF Grants that will provide funding to women faculty. This program will target new research initiatives, career advancement training, and leadership activities. Each competition will be reviewed by separate committees, composed of project personnel and faculty members with experience relevant to the specific program, allowing women to gain experience as both proposers and reviewers. The Seed Award will be a competitive funding opportunity offered annually to women STEM faculty without external funding to support research efforts aimed at collecting pilot data for future external funding submissions. The Career Branch Award will be offered to all women STEM faculty to provide support for advanced training in a particular area, for interdisciplinary and cross-institutional collaboration, or for entrepreneurial and community endeavors. The Leadership Branch Award will provide funding to support attendance at national conferences or training programs that help prepare mid and senior level faculty for positions of academic or professional leadership.

Top-Down Change: Significant research indicates that gender bias is present in evaluations during both hiring and performance reviews. This has important consequences for advancement of women in STEM (Biernat & Fuegen, 2001; Eagly, Karau, & Makhijani, 1995; Foschi, Lai, & Sigerson, 1994; Heilman, Wallen, Fuchs, & Tamkins, 2004; Trix, & Psenka, 2003). While UC standards and procedures exist, it is the unit-level standards and unwritten practices that drive key decisions. The idiosyncrasies of the unit can pose unsuspected barriers to effective hiring (Brecher, Bragger, & Kutucher, 2006). Thus, the effective recruitment of women faculty necessitates the leadership and advocacy of heads and search committees. Further, reductions in bias in the evaluations leading to promotion and tenure occur as a function of a greater amount of information provided about the individual, when written guidelines and criteria are clear, and when the evaluation process itself is more transparent (Fox, 1991, 2003). In addition, Fiske (2006) notes that creating a sense of interdependence among those with the power to make decisions (i.e., deans, heads, committees) and their subordinates (the faculty being evaluated) makes all participants more accountable for reinforcing values of fairness rather than maintaining biased practices. This idea of interdependence drives our efforts for both bottom-up and top-down change and a way of reconciling them through the AAC.

We propose two programmatic components to support top-down change with regard to improving the pipeline. First, LEAF will sponsor three separate annual Training Workshop series for (a) deans, (b) department heads, and (c) members of search committees and Reappointment, Promotion and Tenure (RPT) committees. Each workshop will include didactics and practice and will be developed using best practices models from previous ADVANCE institutions. The materials for these workshops will be adapted from the tools and best practices established by ADVANCE institutions (i.e., University of Michigan) and will be facilitated with assistance from key experts in the relevant domains.


The aim of the Training Workshop series is to heighten administrators’ and key decision makers’ knowledge and understanding of workforce inclusion (generally) and gender issues (specifically). Such an understanding will then motivate the development of sustainable institutional policy that addresses not only standardization of practices, but allows for productive negotiation of sensitive issues such as: (a) equitable practices in salary, resource allocation, and support, (b) dual-career support in both hiring and retention (c) family leave; (d) availability and access to childcare; (e) control over the tenure clock; and (f) transparency and consistency in reappointment, promotion, and tenure practices and policies. Joint administration and faculty support for reform in these areas will lead to a high probability of success in developing and implementing new policies, even if contract negotiations are needed.

Training workshops will take place annually at three levels. First, at the level of the Council of Deans, the program staff in consultation with the program’s advisory boards will help identify themes and resource people for decanal-level hiring workshops and group problem-solving regarding the promotion of change in the STEM disciplines. The decanal workshops will take place in the early fall of the first year and subsequently each spring/summer. In turn, the deans, with support from program staff and advisory board members, will run a second series of pipeline development workshops with department heads. These annual workshops will focus on recruitment, hiring, and RPT (late spring), and annual performance reviews (early fall). The workshops will not simply convey to the heads what decanal expectations are, but also help identify challenges to recruitment, bias in hiring and review practices, the importance of transparency. They will assist heads in passing these messages on to their faculties as they supervise or conduct hiring, promotion, tenure, and review processes that will become more STEM women-friendly. Finally, a third training workshop will be conducted, in early fall, to which all members of hiring and RPT committees will be invited. The workshops will include program staff, deans, union representatives, provostal staff, and department heads. Committee members will be exposed to best practices that may be employed across all departments in how to (a) prepare hiring materials, (b) create a diverse pool of applicants, (c) foster successful and equitable negotiations, (d) address dual career and cluster hire challenges, (e) identify barriers and problem solving strategies for bias in the evaluation process, and (f) address work/life issues (i.e., family leave and tenure clock postponements). Emphasis will also be given to administrative and departmental support for faculty development, methods for promoting leadership, entrepreneurial endeavors, and impact in later career stages.

In order to facilitate the workshops and engage the larger community of all faculty and administration in this top-down process of change, LEAF will also sponsor a Best Practices Seminar Series in which leaders in the fields of innovative transformation will share their insights. The speakers will include previous ADVANCE program directors and administrators, leaders in industry and local organizations (e.g., Procter and Gamble, GE) that promote equity and diversity in their organizations, and scholars specializing in broadening participation of underrepresented groups in the STEM disciplines. For instance, recent studies show that 30% of men, but only 14% of women in cellular and molecular cell biology hold at least one patent while a similar study of thousands of faculty members in the life sciences reported an even lower rate of 13% for men and 6% for women (Rosser & Taylor, 2011). Therefore, we will hold a special seminar in entrepreneurship and practical business skills. There is increasing pressure for academic institutions in Ohio to partner with biotech businesses to create a more nimble and trained workforce. As the program progresses we will also enlist the expertise of faculty who have learned from and been trained in best practices.

Objectives: (a) Increase the percentage of qualified women candidates for STEM scientist positions at UC, (b) Increase the percentage of women hired for STEM scientist positions at UC at all levels, (c) Increase the percentage of tenure-track women who are tenured, (d) Increase the percentage of women tenured associate professors who are promoted to full professor.

Goals: While the ideal is equity in numbers across the board, each department differs when comapared with national norms for representation. Thus our goals will be to, at a minimum, increase representation across all departments to surpass national averages. For some departments, this will mean increases of at least 25% at all levels, while for others, this may be increases of at least 25% only at a particular rank.

II. Transform the climate for STEM faculty by creating social and collaborative mentoring networks to promote intellectual progress, equity, and an inclusive culture. A significant body of social science research indicates that the underrepresentation of women in STEM can in large part be attributed not just to implicit gender bias in recruitment, hiring, advancement, but also to the climate for women within institutions (e.g., NAS, 2007; Valian, 1998). Such biases reflect gender stereotypes that not


only prescribe the different types of careers that men and women are best suited for, but also represent the gender schemas that guide perceptions of acceptable behaviors, expectations, and evaluations within organizational and institutional settings (Fiske, 2002; Kunda, 1999). Ultimately, these biases create a culture that is threatening to women in the STEM disciplines. This threat of being evaluated through the lens of gender bias or stereotypes places women at risk for poor performance (e.g., Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1997), decreased motivation for success and achievement (e.g., Cadinu, Maass, Frigerio, Impagliazzo, & Latinotti, 2003; Smith, Sansone, & White, 2007), decreased sense of belonging (Good, Dweck, & Rattan, 2008; Gupta & Bawhe, 2007), and disengagement and disidentification with the field (Major, Spencer, Schmader, Wolfe & Crocker, 1998, Murphy, Steele, & Gross, 2007). Similarly, bias within the institution contributes to a climate in which women are less willing to break through the “science glass ceiling” (Rosser, 2004) and negotiate for equitable resources for fear of negative reprisals and feedback from colleagues and administration (e.g., Kray, Galinsky, & Thompson, 2002). Improving the pipeline for women faculty in STEM will improve perceptions of the climate, but establishing support systems to enable change is also critical. We do not simply wish to improve the climate for women with regard to career development, but rather we wish to make UC a destination institution where the whole person thrives. Doing so requires breaking down barriers that exist between faculty, administrators, and decision-makers across all levels of the university community to reduce prejudices and promote equal opportunity policies and access to resources (Hicks-Clarke, & Iles, 2000; Kossek & Zonia, 1993). Mentoring has been proposed as a way to address feelings of isolation and lack of support among women in STEM fields (Langdon, 2001) and to increase self-confidence by providing role models and opportunities to discuss balancing professional and personal responsibilities (Chesler, Boyle Single, & Mikic, 2003). Mentoring also provides faculty with a better understanding of the educational climate and a clearer picture of expectations for performance (Brainard & Ailes-Sengers, 1994; Brainard & Carlin, 1998). Accordingly, we will promote climate change through top-down and bottom-up initiatives that include establishing mentoring networks and using the AAC as a forum in which to reconcile and advance change.

While most programs and regulations focus on specific transitions from assistant to associate professor, then from associate to full, we believe support and mentoring must be continuous and encompass both work and life concerns. It should have one-on-one and group components, with multiple opportunities for shared advice and experience that affect all aspects of women’s lives. Women STEM scientists report that co-mentoring relationships that do not separate personal concerns from academic issues are especially valuable and help mitigate feelings of isolation (Liang, Tracy, Taylor, Williams, Jordan, & Miller, 2002; McGuire & Reger, 2003). Moreover, women benefit from relationships where there is an equal exchange of information and where both the mentor and mentee believe they can contribute and gain personally and professionally from the relationship. Thus, our three workshop series will be supplemented by Learning Communities (LCs) in which women address issues spanning the entire career of women STEM scientists. We further propose mentoring for all parties, including mentoring for heads, and the promotion of a culture that values and helps to create mentoring opportunities for all women STEM scientists. In this way, the leadership will set the tone and allow the faculty to understand that mentoring and being mentored is truly a lifelong process.

Bottom-Up Change: In order to achieve our aims of improved climate through intellectual and social support, to provide women faculty with the support they will need to carry through with the skills addressed in the workshops and to explore solutions to new ones, social networks will be established for all of the women who participate in each workshop series. Our aim is to attract every woman in STEM, at every rank. Each LC will include 5-8 women STEM faculty, for a maximal impact of 100 faculty over a 5 year period. Numbers of participants can be adjusted over the period of the grant as new faculty are added or others express interest. The meetings of the LCs will expand upon workshop topics and other seminars targeting topics of special concern to women faculty. The mentoring available to women through the LC experience will be valuable for a number of reasons. Women mentors are not always available in particular fields or departments; therefore a pooling of knowledge and skills through structured mentoring programs, and building bridges to women in related departments at the same or other Universities are vital. The LCs will be sustainable in that members will in turn serve as peer mentors to the next class of LC members and amplify the lessons learned. Over time, our participants will likely hold a variety of leadership roles at the university, which means valuing of mentoring should improve over the life of the grant. One-third of the STEM faculty now at UC are over the age of 60, thus new hires in the next decade could have a major impact on the gender and ethnic diversity of the faculty. It is our goal to provide


women STEM scientists with a program that will attract, support, retain and guide them to their fullest potential. The LC program is an efficient, inexpensive, and sustainable vehicle to accomplish this goal.

The LC sessions will meet in an informal setting after work hours (late afternoon, early evening) and will last 2 hours. A facilitator will be assigned to each LC to lead discussions. Mentors for the participants will be selected from among the senior women faculty in STEM who are self-identified or recommended. We will tap into the available UC communities such as Women’s Initiative Network and The Higher Education Collaborative for Women's Leadership Development of Greater Cincinnati. By providing opportunities for senior faculty to move into informal leadership positions, they will have a chance to develop or influence policies and procedures to support and advance faculty in general, and women faculty in particular. They may also gain a broader perspective of leadership, in research as well as in administration. A major function of lifetime mentoring opportunities is to provide opportunities for mentees to develop into successful mentors in senior stages of their careers. This provides greater representation of women in STEM, and helps sustain a vital support system. Another concern is that associate professors are less-often mentored than their junior counterparts. At this point, women academics in particular tend to get overloaded with service and additional teaching, whereas men academics are more successful in protecting their time. By establishing learning communities for each of the workshop series, we are enabling mentoring at all levels, and the LC’s can address mutual issues directly relevant to those faculty at the appropriate career stage.

These meetings will also serve as a means of continuing the evaluation process, as all participants will have agreed to respond to surveys as a condition of their participation. The senior mentor will set the agenda based on the workshop for that month, but will invite participants to contribute topics of interest or concern. The Consultancy Model has been successfully used for interdisciplinary training and mentoring of junior faculty at the University of Washington and includes; (a) a 3 minute presentation of the “challenge” by the presenter; (b) 2 minutes of clarifying questions by the expert panel and audience; (c) 11 minutes of suggestions by the panel; (d) 10 minutes of additional suggestions from all; (e) a summary and explanation of how the suggestions will be incorporated by the presenter (4 min). This mentoring component is focused on developing problem solving skills and providing participants with immediate feedback that not only benefits the presenter, but all who are involved. This model has additional benefits of including input from faculty from many disciplines who may look at a problem much differently and afford a new perspective on the problem and also to bring faculty members together with similar interests that may result in collaborations.

Institutional best practices can have a powerful effect, not only in identifying what UC could accomplish but by informing how to accomplish it. Therefore, our second program to produce intellectual and social support for women faculty will be the LEAF Visiting Scholars Program. We will invite two individuals annually to be member of the program. They will be senior faculty members from a public research university that has completed its ADVANCE institutional transformation grant and eminent women STEM scientists. They will be asked to participate in LEAF programs, present research and develop collaborations with UC women STEM faculty. We will also utilize networks the Drexel University based ELAM program (Executive Leadership for Women in Academic Medicine). Nearly 700 senior women leaders have participated in the program since 1995 and ELAM alumnae make up 25 percent of the executive positions in academic medicine and dentistry that are held by women. We have several graduates of ELAM at UC, including the LEAF Program Director, Dr. Cushion. By calling upon ELAM fellows to provide their expertise, we enable our women STEM faculty to succeed in their leadership paths. Thus, we increase visibility of women STEM scientists, enable networking and collaboration across institutions, and learn directly from successful role models.

Top-Down Change: We envision a change process by which the provost clearly communicates to the relevant deans what the five year goals are for the ADVANCE grant and solicits their input into what is needed to make this work. We have compiled the necessary statistics and data on women in STEM for each college that will permit each dean to work towards meeting the hiring, retention and impact goals delineated herein. The deans must be involved collaboratively in determining what the immediate priorities are and how to collaborate with the program and its staff. This engagement will be facilitated by directed workshops and facilitated by the LEAF team. In turn, the deans need to build the goals of ADVANCE into all of their communications with their faculties and their heads. It is by their example and leadership that these goals will be accomplished. Unit heads will be expected to engage their faculties in logic model development early in the first year of the project. Deans should encourage their heads to share these plans across units and even across colleges. Once a year, all of the heads and


deans should meet to discuss their models, progress towards goals, and proposed changes to their plans. Heads should be evaluated at least in part on progress in implementing their models. We understand that this process will not be easy or always a comfortable one, and that a sufficient time commitment must be made for these workshops and meetings. Soon after the award, we will start to work with the administration to plan for these meetings.

Following is a discussion of how we will promote department- and institution-level transformation by promoting the development and use of logic models. A logic model is a schematic representation of a theory of change (e.g., Friedman, 2005). The use of these models has revolutionized the practice of program evaluation over the past 20 years. The Kellogg Foundation has long promoted their use and Kellogg’s website offers an excellent introduction to this technology.

While we will involve the Internal Advisory Board in planning the exact form of the logic model we will use, we have developed an initial version, shown below in Table 2. Logic models often include short, intermediate and long-range goals. Such models are less than optimal for long-term organization development efforts where goals are sequentially dependent. Departments cannot promote women faculty until such women are hired, and departments cannot hire women faculty until they change the way they recruit and evaluate candidates. Thus, each row in the following model represents a desired goal, and the change efforts must be sequential. By retention in Table 2, we mean the ability to thrive long-term, even after promotion to full professor.

Table 2: A Proposed Logic Model for Departmental Transformation

Benchmark Peers

UC STEM Units

Target for Unit

Key Processes

Result for Unit

Recruitment Hiring Promotion Retention Unit Climate

The double line separating retention and unit climate conveys the notion that efforts to address

unit climate for women may follow from retaining women faculty, but that it may also be possible to improve the climate for women in advance of and in preparation of efforts to improve recruitment, hiring, promotion and retention processes.

In working with our external evaluation team, we will choose benchmark institutions for column 1. We can produce the figures for column 2 from internal data. The target (column 3) will be negotiated with the college dean after the unit has gone through a self-study process with the help of project staff members, who can help gather data, assist with development of the logic model, and so on. Column 4 (key processes) will be developed by the unit to help it meet its target. Similar kinds of indicators will be developed for rows two through four. The indicators in row five may be more varied, and might include indicators that could only be measured via survey research.

Logic models will force us to successfully integrate three vital components for change: (a) administrative and faculty commitment, (b) centralized resources to facilitate change, and (c) unit-level responsibility for implementing change. Too many of our efforts in the past have failed to hold units responsible for identifying and executing the processes needed to address key challenges in their units. Likewise, although intentions for change were oftentimes present, there was a lack of resources available to bridge the gap between intent and action. If department heads can do this without availing themselves of central resources, they will still be recognized as succeeding. But contrariwise, even if units take advantage of every central resource, that is not sufficient. We expect change. Hence, the title of Friedman’s 2005 book, “Trying Hard is Not Good Enough”.

Objectives: (a) Increase the proportion of STEM women scientists who report feeling empowered, engaged, and achieving their potential; (b) Reduce the discrepancy between men and women STEM scientists who report concerns about UC as a workplace due to work-life balance issues or about UC as a supportive workplace where they can project that they will be successful.

Goals: (a) Increase the proportion of women STEM scientists who report positively on their career progress and prospects as well as on representation, recruitment, retention. (b) Reduce the discrepancy between men and women STEM scientists so that they perceive the climate and department


in a similar way. This will entail reducing perceptions of isolation, reducing misconceptions that women are advancing and feeling welcome, as well as instituting transparent, actionable policy.

III. Creating interdependence by enabling sustainable dynamic institutional practice and policy through the Accountability and Advocacy Council: Beyond identifying barriers and initiating creative solutions, for real change to occur, there must be cooperative engagement. The primary aim in establishing the Accountability and Advocacy Council (AAC) is to provide a venue in which bottom-up and top-down approaches being used can be reconciled. As AAC Chair, we are putting Dr. Valerie Hardcastle in a critically important role to coordinate these efforts. She is a current dean who will be transitioning back to faculty by the time the proposed work begins. She has had experience with ADVANCE at Virginia Tech and is ideally suited for the AAC role because she can interpret the needs of the faculty to the administration and vice versa.

Members of the AAC will include women STEM scientists from across UC and will include faculty at all ranks who participate in the workshops and LCs, as well as men faculty from the relevant STEM areas. The primary responsibilities of the AAC will be to (a) critically evaluate on a continuing basis, and with project support, data on recruitment, hiring, retention, promotion and advancement initiatives, (b) report on the systemic changes as a result of logic models for systemic policy and leadership reform, (c) act to provide feedback on initiative successes and challenges (in conjunction with advisory boards) to facilitate continued progress , and (d) provide a venue for safe, positive and effective communication between the different programming of LEAF (i.e., bottom-up and top-down programming outcomes, faculty and administration, etc.). In addition, Dr. Hardcastle will facilitate direct and back-channel communication between the owners of bottom-up and top-down initiatives.

In addition to services provided by the project directors and the evaluation team, the AAC will be tasked with monitoring successful progress and maintenance of the relevant departments for collecting institutional hiring, reappointment, promotion, and attrition data. In conjunction of the Office for Equal Opportunity, the UC chapter of AAUP (a collective bargaining unit for the faculty), and Institutional Research, a centralized database will be constructed to monitor women recruits and faculty from hiring through promotion to full. In addition, the council will work with the project team and administration to establish sustainable practice and policy for more comprehensive data on recruitment and retention.

Successful change efforts require active engagement of a coalition of change agents representing various levels and functions of the organization. The AAC will be designed, in part, to serve in this role. The AAC’s central position and cross-sectional membership will uniquely position it to provide and receive objective, bi-directional feedback on initiative successes and challenges. AAC members will be able to access and share feedback through their standing connections within departments, units and committees. Cumulatively, feedback on program-related initiatives as well as UC’s overall workplace climate for diversity will be critical for facilitating discussions amongst all constituents and for advising LEAF project leaders on suggestions for improvement or adjustment. Accordingly, an active and engaged AAC should create a sense of interdependence among administrators (i.e., deans, heads, and committees) and faculty. As Fiske (2006) suggests, interdependence will, in turn, make all parties more accountable for reinforcing the values of fairness and equity rather than maintaining biased practices.

We recognize the possibility that some participants (in either the top-down or bottom-up activities) may have had experiences at UC that were negative or signaled bias or exclusion based on gender, race, or some other criterion. These individuals may not feel safe discussing these experiences in a workshop, training session, learning community, or LEAF-sponsored survey for fear of retribution or reprisal. The AAC, therefore, will provide a “safe zone” for individuals to discuss these experiences in a manner that simultaneously emphasizes confidentiality and anonymity for that individual but also ensures that these experiences are documented and become part of the institutional memory.

Objectives: Create an organizational space in which participants and staff and administrators can communicate outside of formal organizational channels.We envision something like an ombuds office except that instead of focusing on problem remediation (although that can be done here too) the focus will be on enchancing supportive and positive communications, as when a junior faculty might be able to communicate something important about her career at UC and have it get onto the provost’s agenda.

Goals: Minimize the number of problems reported in surveys and key informant interviews in which program participants complain that their bottom-up change initiatives have been stymied by organizational barriers, inertia, or (and we do not anticipate this) active resistance by heads or deans.


Social Science Study

In the supplement (attached) we propose using a multi-method research approach across three studies tailored to address both top-down, and bottom-up change. These studies will focus on social climate, as expressed through message linguistics, subjective experiences, and social networks. The top-down assessment will use discourse analysis to explore unfiltered e-mail communication regarding women in STEM. Bottom-up analysis will use a participatory method, Photovoice, to give women STEM scientists a tool for sharing their individual viewpoints through visual imagery and personal stories. Lastly, the connection between the top-down and bottom-up processes will be assessed by analyzing the depth and value of STEM professors’ networks and administrative expectations of women’s networks. These studies will be conducted by faculty and graduate students, and will be turned into a series of presentations and publications.

Dissemination

Dissemination of LEAF’s successes, programs, and outreach will be essential to the success of this program. Many outlets will be used to broadly disseminate information to enhance the visibility of UC scientists and progress the ADVANCE mission as a whole. LEAF will share results and products internally with various constituents as well as externally with other institutions and organizations. By doing so, we will make our initiatives well-known to those in STEM disciplines across and outside the campus, giving these individuals the opportunity to spread the message as they interact with other institutions. Beyond the sharing of our experiences and findings, we aim to change the nature of the very language used by members of UC. In the same way that UC 2019 (the president’s strategic plan) has become an integral part of the way we think and speak here at UC, we aim for the LEAF program to have comparable impact.

To enhance impact, disseminated materials will combine ADVANCE-specific information with practical tools for STEM scientists. Information about the LEAF mission, women in STEM, and best practices, will be combined with announcements of career-enhancing opportunities such as conferences, funding, and training opportunities. This will contribute to the ADVANCE initiatives as well as attract people to use LEAF services. The audience will be further expanded by targeting STEM students and faculty at all career stages. These tactics will be applied to electronic and print media, and professional development opportunities. We expect communication tools to evolve during the tenure of LEAF and thus students and young faculty will be probed by informal meet ups to identify new and effective modes of digital communication. We intend to use all the resources available to us at UC. This effort will be an important facet of our ability to remain nimble.

A website and facebook page will offer convenient access to LEAF services and communicate its goals to a broader audience. The website will provide contact information, a calendar, useful links, reports of initiatives and findings, as well as an online toolkit with training and eLearning information. Beyond this, the website will focus on creating a sense of community. To accomplish this, those agreeing to participate in LEAF programs, including speakers, mentors, and key faculty, will be invited to add a link to their personal profile on the website to enhance their visibility. In addition, the website will identify a contact person to respond to questions and comments. This position will serve to pair dissemination with a process for feedback. The facebook site will mirror many of these features, but also allow for informal dialogue and discussion between LEAF personnel, participants, STEM faculty and students, and members of the broader community.

Print media will be utilized in the form of a bimonthly newsletter, also featured on the website. The newsletter will be dispersed to STEM faculty mailboxes and left in lobby areas around campus. Best practices of ADVANCE will be highlighted along with faculty profiles and career opportunities. LEAF will also increase its visibility by displaying posters throughout the STEM departments on a yearly basis, including those from poster presentations. Our aim here, as with the website, is to use increased visibility of our participants to enhance collaboration among its members.

Before completion of the funding period, a comprehensive day-long workshop will be held inviting individuals from other organizations and institutions to learn best practices of promoting equity in the workplace. This event reflects a commitment of the UC LEAF initiative to partner with organizations from various sectors in the region to disseminate information and share best practices. As one of the largest public universities in the Midwest and one of the top 25 public research universities in the country, UC will position itself as a leader in the scholarship and practice of the advancement and inclusion of women in


STEM disciplines. Engagement of the broader community will provide two primary benefits: enhanced opportunities to recruit top student and faculty talent into STEM programs through greater visibility and promotion of ADVANCE efforts and increased opportunities to identify novel and innovative best practices by expanding information exchange across sectors. Information presented during this workshop will be shared through the website.

A final component of dissemination, professional presentations and publications, will be done to share research findings of LEAF with other institutions. We aim to send a minimum of 4 people a year to NSF ADVANCE meetings, and for them to be involved in panel discussions, symposia and workshops. In addition the work of the research projects, and ADVANCE as a whole, align with the work of the social science study team. Their involvement will lead to a number of additional presentations and publications in scholarly journals, and will be shared at conferences such as the Gender Equity conference, APA annual meetings, Divisions 8 and 27 of APA annual meetings, the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference, and the Society for Community Research and Action biannual conference. Findings will also be submitted to WEPAN Knowledge Center, a resource tool for women in the STEM disciplines.

Project Management

Leadership Team: Provost Santa Ono will serve as the Principal Investigator (PI) of the UC ADVANCE project. The Program Director will be Professor Melanie Cushion (Internal Medicine), and the two Associate Directors will be Professors Rachel Kallen and Stacie Furst-Holloway (both Psychology).

Dr. Cushion has over 25 years experience conducting research funded by the NIH, VA, and other sources. She currently is the Associate Chair for Research in Internal Medicine and an Associate Dean of the Research at the College of Medicine. She directs an ongoing infectious diseases research laboratory at the VA hospital and has participated in VA and NIH study sections and thus can contribute a breadth of knowledge to the research concerns of the STEM women faculty. Dr. Cushion has been a mentor for graduate students, post-docs, and young faculty. She recently graduated as a fellow from the ELAM program (2010-2011) and has as one of her impact goals to be the first director of LEAF. She continues her growth in mentoring by taking ad hoc classes offered by the university and VA, such as the “GROW” model for mentoring.

Dr. Kallen is a social psychologist whose research and service efforts strongly align with the goals and initiatives of ADVANCE and the LEAF program. Her research program as the director of the Social Identity and Diversity Laboratory primarily explores the social and cognitive consequences for individuals that are targets of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, with a primary focus on investigating the specific outcomes associated with women’s and underrepresented minorities’ marginalized status within STEM domains. Since joining the faculty at UC in 2009, Dr. Kallen has focused her efforts on applying empirical findings from research concerning gender bias and stereotype threat to the intervention strategies directed to broadening participation at all levels of the pipeline, including her recent proposal submission as PI for funding for an REU program in Psychology. In addition to her program directorship responsibilities, as Co-Director of the Social Science Research, Dr. Kallen will be responsible for contributing to the existing literature within the field by submitting findings of the proposed research and ADVANCE programs for publication and presentation in scientific journals and national conference proceedings.

Dr. Furst-Holloway provides expertise in both organizational change and women’s leadership development. Her industry experience includes leading a number of organizational change efforts focused on promoting broad-based empowerment and accountability. These efforts subsequently informed her research relating to commitment to change, retention, and engagement. Her current research also focuses on the experience of women leaders in the workplace, using role congruity theory to investigate factors that promote or discourage advancement of women into leadership positions as well as factors that predict job and career satisfaction and success. This work is being sponsored by SOAR, a leadership development program for women. With SOAR, Dr. Furst-Holloway is building a research consortium of organizations in the region (e.g., Toyota, UPS) to investigate, for example, tangible and intangible barriers to advancement women face and how an organization’s culture of inclusion influences women’s engagement, well-being, and satisfaction. In addition to responsibilities for programmatic management, as Co-Director of the social science study, Dr. Furst-Holloway will also be responsible for


contributing to the existing literature within the field by submitting findings of the proposed research and ADVANCE programs for publication and presentation in scientific journals and national conference proceedings.

The leadership team also consists of Professors Sandra Degen (Associate Chair, Pediatrics), Urmila Ghia (Mechanical Engineering), Valerie Hardcastle (Psychology & Philosophy), and Steven Howe (Head, Psychology). The leadership team will be responsible for advising on the development of programs and initiatives of the grant. They will meet monthly to discuss project progress and monitor performance of the focus areas of the grant. The program directors will oversee the project budget, and will facilitate implementation of the various programming. Administrative support will be provided by a full time administrative coordinator. In addition, the leadership team will meet with the evaluation and research teams regularly to receive feedback on the progress of various programs of the grant.

Evaluation Team: The Evaluation team will include Dr. Steven Howe, and Dr. Sarah Woodruff (Director, Ohio's Evaluation and Assessment Center for Mathematics and Science Education, Miami University). They will be responsible for the formative and summative evaluations of the grant. The evaluation will consist of internal and external components, as described below in the program evaluation section. Both the Internal and External evaluations will be led by Dr. Woodruff to maintain coordination across all evaluations. The evaluation team will meet with the leadership team regularly to share formative evaluation data that will be needed to make midcourse corrections as the program evolves. Key findings will be disseminated through various communication strategies as discussed above.

Research Team: The research team will be jointly directed by Drs Howe, Kallen, and Furst-Holloway. Each brings their unique expertise in organizations, social psychology and bias, program evaluation, and qualitative and quantitative methodologies and analysis. They will be assisted by two graduate students annually and will work closely with the evaluation team to collaborate and share data, as well as to provide additional information regarding grant initiatives. The research team will also report regularly to the entire leadership team and the advisory committees to report findings and progress on the three proposed studies. Finally, in addition to primary dissemination strategies, the researchers will share findings both broadly and within their specialized areas through publications and presentations.

Advisory Committees: The Internal and External Advisory Committees will meet with the leadership team to review the progress of the project as a whole, provide critical top-level input, and provide their recommendations to the program on a quarterly basis and semi-annual basis, respectively. The Internal Advisory Committee will be chaired by Dr. Urmila Ghia, and will consist of Drs Kay Kinoshita (Professor and Department Head, Physics), Shuk-Mein Ho (Chair, Environmental Health), Tom Boat (Vice President for Health Affairs; Dean, College of Medicine), Carlo Montemagno (Dean, College of Engineering and Applied Science), John Bryan Vice Provost for Academic Personnel), Santa Ono, Valerie Hardcastle, and Sandra Degen. The External Advisory Committee will be chaired by Dr. Sandra Degen, and will consist of Virginia Valian (Distinguished Professor, Psychology, Hunter College), Nora Zorich, ( Vice President, P&G), Jeanne Rosario (Vice President and General Manager, GE), Stephanie Goodwin (Program Director, LEADER Consortium-ADVANCE, Wright State University), Peggy Layne ( AdvanceVT Program Director), and Laura Schweitzer (President, Union Graduate College).

Project Evaluation

The evaluation of this project will be coordinated by a program staff member, Dr. Steven Howe, and a subcontractor, Dr. Sandra Woodruff. Dr. Howe’s role will be to implement and oversee all on-campus data collection activities except those that would be more appropriately managed by an external evaluator. Dr. Woodruff and her staff will have responsibility for the external evaluation and for most of the processing and reporting of data from the internal evaluation. This division of roles applies to both formative and summative components of the evaluation.

Dr. Howe is an experienced evaluation and policy researcher with extensive experience in program planning. His clients over the past 10 years have included the City of Cincinnati, the Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, the Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission, and the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs. His toolkit includes statistical modeling, experience with administrative data, logic models, surveys, key informant interviewing, and focus groups.

Dr. Woodruff is head of the Ohio E&A Center, which focuses on program level services that assess or evaluate quality and productivity, while project level services use appropriate measures and


instruments to assess effectiveness with extensive experience in the evaluation of systemic reform, specializing in the evaluation of K-20+ mathematics, science, engineering and technology programs and projects. Dr. Woodruff has expertise in instrument development, quantitative data analysis and qualitative methods, as well as knowledge and experience working with faculty and administrators.

Formative and Summative evaluations will result from data derived from both quantitative and qualitative research methods regarding programming, initiatives, research, and accountability. The multi-method approach for data collection proposed her will allow for both systematic and in-depth assessment of the process, strategies, and outcomes for sustainable change. Below is a brief outline of the evaluation plan, as requested. Should this proposal be accepted for funding, we will work with Dr. Woodruff to provide a detailed version of the project evaluation.

Pipeline Development Our overall objective will be to “grow our own” women STEM faculty by ehanced recruitment, retention, and impact strategies designed to make UC a destination for women STEM faculty. Key activities: (a) Bottom-Up: workshops at three career levels and grants program; (b) Top-Down: Training workshops, best practices seminars.

Baseline data: We currently have no central source for documenting baseline conditions at UC (what data we have was presented earlier). Thus, one of our important planned activities is to construct in the provost’s office the infrastructure needed to compile all of these data and do retrospective analyses since 2002. Formative evaluation activities: Throughout the course of the project we will work with the Office of Equal Opportunity and with Instituional Research to create and maintain a database on the recruitment, hiring, retention, and career trajectory of STEM scientists, male and female. This will be used to assess progress toward our quantitative goals. In addition, we will annually survey all STEM scientists (with identifying information) to track publications, awards, professional memberships, etc. Project staff will meet periodically to discuss progress and adjust the workplan accordingly. Intermediate (at least quarterly) progress reports will be discussed by the project team and with the advisory boards. We will evaulate the workshop series by asking participants to complete pre- and post-series assessments as well as session evaluations. The assessments will focus on questions relevant to the workshop content and series as a whole (i.e., empowerment, engagement, and impact, respectively). Periodically, interviews will be conducted with key informants (provostal staff, deans, heads, selected faculty members and selected advisory committee members) to assess the current status of the pipeline, identify success and continued challenges, identify ways in which our bottom-up and top-down strategies have had impact. Summative evaluation activities: We will analyze hiring and retention data for the institution as whole and by STEM unit. The results will be presented as a flow chart from recruitment to hiring to retention to promotion, by year. In addition, our external evaluator will conduct a web-based survey of all workshop participants in the 5th year of the project, which will provide an opportunity to assess how the succcession of workshop series worked for those individuals who participated in more than one. Finally, our external evaluator will conduct key informant intrviews in the 5th year of the project that will document key strengths and weaknesses of our efforts and results and summarize these in the form of lessons learned.

Transform the Climate Key activities: (a) Bottom-Up: Learning communities and visiting scholars; (b) Top-Down: Mentoring of heads, site visits, shadowing at ADVANCE institutions, and logic models.

Baseline data: We have survey data from men and women STEM scientists at UC from 2009 and 2011. Beginning in the first year of the project, we will make modifications to our surveys to use the Work Environment Survey now used at Michigan State and Purdue.

Formative evaluation activities: All workshops for deans, heads, and faculty will be assessed by participants and via key informant interviews (several per year).

LEAF staff will maintain logs of all development activities and share these activity reports with the advisory committees, who can help shape our efforts. The external evaluator will also periodically conduct key informant interviews designed to illuminate implementation problems. Evaluation staff (internal and external) will evaluate and share with deans and provost ideas for the ways in which unit-level logic models can be improved. Summative evaluation activities: We will conduct annual climate surveys of all STEM scientists (so as to compare responses by gender) through the course of the project.


We will conduct pre- and post-learning community surveys with participants. Women will be asked respond to a series of questions related to both professional issues and work-life balance issues from three perspectives: (a) how they view the problem, (b) how they would answer if their work climates were ideal, and (c) how they think their department heads would answer the questions.

We will maintain a data-base of all change activities initiated by learning communities as a whole or (as will often be the case for mid-career participants) by individual participants. We will determine which projects moved through to fruition and get assessments from the women, from their mentors, and from their unit heads as to the impact that the initiatives had. If the initiatives stalled or had no impact, we will try to learn why.

In year 5, summative evaluations of each unit’s logic model (and outcomes) will be assessed by the external evaluator.

Accountability and Advocacy Council Key activities: (a) Provide feedback on initiative successes and challenges; and (b) provide venue for safe, positive, effective communications between participants, program staff and administration.

Baseline data: Most of our assessments here will be qualitative. However, this will include the tracking of documented changes in policy, records of engagement and activity coordinated across the bottom up and top down processes, and evaluations by participants of the efficacy of the AAC.

Formative evaluation activities: We will also work with our staff to keep track of the agenda issues Dr. Hardcastle deals with in her role of mediating top-down and bottom-up changes processes.

In addition to survey data from participants, the evaluation staff will periodically conduct key informat interviews with council members and with relevant members of the advisory councils. Summative evaluation activities: In year five summative evaluation’s of the survey data, as well as key-informant interviews regarding the key initiatives of the AAC will be assessed.

Intellectual Merit: The UC initiative stands out among many existing ADVANCE programs for a few reasons. First, like many, we plan reforms that are driven by the senior administration and deans. However, the reforms will be designed and implemented at the unit level and closely monitored by the project team and AAC. Second, like many initiatives, we are using developmental programming and encouraging the women participants to initiate their own efforts to reform culture. Unlike many programs we have a formal mechanism, the Accountability and Advocacy Council, to facilitate both these top-down and bottom-up efforts and help them produce actionable and sustainable change. In addition to the innovative programming, our proposed Social Science Study also offers unique insight to the process and outcomes of the key initiatives using multiple methodologies (e.g.,Photovoice and discourse analyses) that have not been seen in previous ADVANCE grants. This will uniquely contribute to the existing literature concerning transformation.

Broader Impact: Through conference attendance and publications, including those concerning

the significant social science research we propose, our work will influence other ADVANCE programs and higher education in general, as well as contribute to the corpus of research on the underrepresentation of women in the STEM disciplines. Members of our core team have expertise in gender bias, human resources, and policy research. We anticipate our work being presented at community psychology conferences, industrial and organizational psychology conferences, and human resources/management conferences, as well as being published in the corresponding disciplinary journals. Many of the programs we propose are highly efficient and therefore useful across organizations seeking to promote inclusiveness and accountability

Results from prior NSF support: Urmila Ghia is Co-PI on a STEP grant (DUE-0756921, 5/08-4/13, $2,000,000) to establish a seamless K-17 program. A key activity Urmila Ghia is responsible for is the Academic-Year Research Experience for Undergraduates (AY-REU) Program, one of two major Programs for Pathways to Graduate School (the other is an 8-week Summer REU Program for 12 students/year). The goal of the REU Program is to provide research training on the use of modern technology in conducting and disseminating research. The objective is to encourage talented undergraduates to enroll in graduate school by exposing them to research.The AY-REU program has been offered to 21 students in AY 2009-10 and 22 students in AY 2010-11 (total = 43 students).


Social Science Study: A multi-method approach to examining bottom-up and top-down change

Overview

The research supplement will consist of three studies, using a multi-method approach tailored to each of the processes of change being assessed: Top-down, bottom-up, and the intersection of the two. These studies will focus on social climate, as expressed through message linguistics, subjective experiences, and social networks. The top-down assessment will use discourse analysis to explore unfiltered e-mail communication regarding women in STEM. Bottom-up analysis will use a participatory method, Photovoice, to give women STEM scientists a tool for sharing their individual viewpoints through visual imagery and personal stories. Lastly, the connection between the top-down and bottom-up processes will be assessed by analyzing the depth and value of STEM professors’ networks and administrative expectations of women’s networks. These studies will be conducted by faculty and graduate students, and will be turned into a series of presentations and publications.

Study 1: Analyzing top-down communication through discourse analysis

Conceptual framework

It is increasingly acknowledged that discourse is the basis of the organizational environment (e.g., Alvesson & Karreman, 2000; Taylor & Cooren, 1997), with these discourses embedded with cultural expression (Alvesson & Karreman, 2000; Fairhurst, 2004). The structure of communication determines how an issue is discussed, behavior during conversation, and resulting knowledge (Hall, 2001). In turn, communication can result in larger schemas about self and others (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997) becoming instrumental in directing related behaviors. Language can therefore be studied to reveal the underlying power structures and ideology of an institution and the pathways through which it influences institutional outcomes (Hardy, 2004).

Discourse analysis examines how language is used to communicate knowledge, identity, and social relationships within an institutional framework (Luke, 1996). This technique is commonly used to investigate how power relationships are transmitted and social identities are constructed (Van Dijk, 1993). Discourse analysis avoids the pitfalls of self-report by analyzing real world communications. When using messaging through electronic mediums like e-mail, people are less likely to consciously control for subtle biases and dominance may be manifested through verbal mechanisms such as rhetoric, semantics, turn-taking, formality, and positive and negative representations (Van Dijk, 1993). UC ADVANCE can gain understanding of the underlying beliefs of the organization and the information transmitted to its members by examining commonplace interactions.

Method

A number of electronic documents will be sampled, extending from two years prior to UC ADVANCE, through the first four years of the project. All STEM-related online communications (e.g., e-mails and webpages) will be examined for relevance. All communications to STEM scientists via email distribution lists will be examined, as well be workload documents, departmental and college bylaws, and reappointment, promotion and tenure policies. Throughout the first four years of ADVANCE, this corpus will be continuously updated. Data coding will be developed through informed adaptation of the grounded theory approach that involves using inductive reasoning to generate theory of an organization originally advocated by Glaser and Strauss (1967). More specifically, the current project will employ a grounded theory perspective later modified by Strauss that allows the researcher to start with basic research questions and problems (Corbin & Strauss, 1990; Devadas, Silong, & Ismail, 2011). This perspective has a constructivist approach which encourages the researcher to take into account


context and the subjective experiences of the participants, something typically restricted in the Glaserian tradition (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Devadas, Silong, & Ismail, 2011). Theory is based on data, not a priori hypotheses. By adapting theory to identifiable real world occurrences, it is made more functional within the context of a given organization. We will therefore identify patterns of communication to gain a clearer picture of social interactions within UC, and base theories of change off of this information. In addition to examining the experiences of women, data analyses will focus on messages which deal directly and indirectly with racial and ethnic minorities, and grounded theory will be carefully applied to these various subgroups.

Hypotheses

A baseline of communication will be assessed by examining data from the two years previous to NSF ADVANCE funding. It is hypothesized that following this period, social inequality, as expressed through written language, will decrease. Conversely, supportive communications toward women in STEM will increase. Satisfaction with work, based on annual surveys from women in STEM, will be expressed in regular communication, correlating with unit level differences in communications. These changes in communication will vary by STEM unit in ways that are explicable from other data (logic models, key informant interviews, etc.).

Study 2: Photovoice


Participatory action research (PAR) is used to engage people in analyzing their experiences and contributing to institutional transformation through research and action. It additionally transforms the researcher into an activist, by identifying aspects of the environment which can be targeted for change. By engaging individuals most affected by a given issue in research, PAR lays the foundation for grassroots action. Aligning with the goal of initiating bottom-up change, Photovoice, a form of PAR (Wang, 1999), will provide further opportunities to contribute to the ADVANCE mission.

Photovoice ensures active participation in data gathering by asking participants to share their individual experiences through photographs and to engage in group discussion of those photos (Wang & Burris, 1997). These discussions allow for personal validation and also serve to facilitate relationship building among participants. In addition, Photovoice analysis connects bottom-up and top-down processes. Participants can engage in critical thinking about the strengths and shortcomings of their organization, simultaneously having a venue to communicate these messages to those in administrative roles. Photovoice is designed to promote bottom-up change by encouraging communication among community members and disseminating this information to policy makers through collective expression and action (Wang & Burris, 1994).

In sum, within the context of research, Photovoice may serve to confirm or deny the utility of various programs, as well as define problems within an organization (Wang & Burris, 1997). Beyond this function, it provides validation to the minority perspective, enhances networking, and connects top-down and bottom-up processes. Photovoice is therefore useful beyond its primary purpose as a research tool.

Method

A minimum of 24 STEM women each year will be recruited to participate, with half of the women in early career stages and half of the women from middle career stages. These women will be asked to continue as participants each year, for four years. Those who leave the university will continue to be contacted to gather information about their experiences and resignation.


Once a year, over a period of 4 weeks, women will be asked to take six photographs that represent important aspects of their lives. Women will be asked to e-mail these pictures to project staff. All participants also will be expected to attend one of four scheduled group meetings. During these meetings, women will take turns sharing one of their pictures with the group. They will discuss (for a few minutes) what the image represents and why they selected it. These narratives will be recorded. Women who have left UC or who cannot make a group will have the option of e-mailing their responses. In years 2-4, researchers will select a subset of pictures from previous years and ask the women to do a new narrative on those pictures (without having the benefit of seeing what they had previously said).

In addition, a small number of departmental heads, directors, and deans will be asked to predict the general issues that women will address through Photovoice. Not only will this encourage more critical thinking from those in administrative positions, but we will be able to compare perceptions of those involved in top-down processes with the bottom-up message that women themselves provide.

As with the first study, a coding system will be developed using grounded theory, with an emphasis on the Straussian approach. Photovoice, as first conceptualized, was intended to identify themes for change (Want & Burris, 1997); relying on the inductive reasoning similar to that applied in grounded theory. The emergent theory and findings will be assessed in terms of race and ethnicity.

Hypotheses

It is anticipated that women’s images and stories will become increasingly positive over time. Narrative themes of work-life imbalance and lack of confidence will become less common, while feelings of empowerment and mastery will increase. It is predicted that these themes (work-life balance, confidence, empowerment, and mastery) will predict separation from UC in earlier years.

Regarding the expectations of administrators, it is predicted that administrators will underestimate the amount of negative content in women’s messages. Over time, women’s Photovoice messages will contain less negative content, becoming more congruent with administrator predictions.

Study 3: Analysis of Network Depth and Value


Social relationships and intra-organizational networking have repeatedly been shown to predict career success (e.g., Sparrowe, Liden, Wayne, & Kraimer, 2001). However, building social networks may become difficult when STEM women enter into an area where they are judged, implicitly or explicitly, to be less competent outsiders. In addition, social networks become more difficult to manage when work-life balance becomes unmanageable. Thus, a key component to analyzing the success of ADVANCE entails assessing the social climate through real connections between people within UC.

Method

All women involved in learning communities during years 1-4 of the grant will be asked participate in outlining their networks annually. At the end of the study, we will have four years of data from LC participants in year one, three years of data from participants in year two etc. To compare men and women’s networking success, we will invite men to participate. This subgroup of men will be nominated by women peers in their department. If they decline, we will work with the women participants to find another match.


Once a year, each participant will be invited to send us a list of potential references. To be included on a reference list, participants must be at least 90% certain that the nominated references would write a letter of recommendation for him or her. We will prompt the women to include names of references who could write in response to narrow prompts such as “community leadership,” “university service,” etc. in addition to names of people who could provide comprehensive career progress and impact evaluations.

Beyond reporting potential references, participants will submit a list of support people. Participants may submit as many names as they wish, but each person listed should be someone that the person knows he or she could rely on for help or support. In addition to a general category of professional career support, we will prompt for specific kinds of support people, such as “proposal editing,” “conflict with supervisor,” and “advice on work-life balance.” When a reference or support person is not a UC employee, the participant will be asked for their title and organization.

After writing their lists, participants will be asked to complete a short questionnaire about their degree of satisfaction with their reference and support groups. Participants will also be asked about the utility of their networks in achieving life and career goals. They will be prompted not to evaluate specific individuals, but rather to rate their degree of satisfaction with categories of references and support people and the usefulness of those categories for goal attainment in specific domains such as publishing, funding, career advancement, etc. In addition, participants will be asked each year to indicate what three steps they plan to take in the coming year to increase the depth and value of their network. The following years, we will feedback these answers to the participants on yearly basis (but only these answers, not names generated) and ask the women to evaluate the success of their planned efforts.

As with study two, administrators will be asked to make predictions about reported network depth and value among men and women STEM scientists. Approximately 10 department heads, directors, and deans will be interviewed. Questions will inquire about their perceptions about women’s satisfaction with work, amount of supportive communication, and network equality between the genders.

Hypotheses

While it is hypothesized that men in year one will have more valuable social networks, it is anticipated that the work of UC ADVANCE will over time lead women to have networks that closely resemble their male peers. In year one, men will likely have richer, deeper, and self-assessed more valuable support networks, as well as support networks that include a larger number of more senior colleagues. However, women participants in the ADVANCE program will close the above gaps with their male peers over the course of the research program. Overall, STEM women’s supportive communications will increase over study period, and this increase will correspond with women scientist satisfaction with work based on annual surveys. Change in communications will vary by STEM unit in ways that are explicable from other data (logic models, key informant interviews, etc.)

As with the first two studies, racial and ethnic minority women will be assessed as subgroups as well as with other STEM scientist women. It is predicted that minority women will initially have greater discrepancies in network depth and value. Over time, these networks will also become more similar to those of other women and men. Regarding the administrators interviewed, it is anticipated that they will overestimate equality in networks between the genders, the utility of women’s networks, and amount of supportive communications. However, it is believed that women’s networks will become increasingly in line with administrative expectations.

1 �

Response to Concerns about Intellectual Merit

Part 1: Social Science Study Proposals

As mentioned in the budget impact statement, we decided that we had to eliminate one of our three proposed social science studies. Upon consideration of which study would have the least impact on the aims of the proposal, if removed, we chose to eliminate the Photovoice study.

Among the concerns voiced around our social science proposals were that (a) the piece was not well-defined and (b) some of the research may not be feasible. We were also asked to explain our underlying rationale for the studies. In order to provide sharper definition of the proposed research and to underscore the feasibility of the two studies, we made numerous small changes to our proposals. Rather than list all of the changes, we decided that it would be easier for you to review our work if we simply presented our edited versions of what was originally submitted. In the below we emphasize the practical steps associated with doing the work, provide more details about such things as sample sizes, and mention some ways in which our research will relate to our programmatic efforts. As a general principle, we want to acknowledge that some of our subsample sizes will be such that we will not be able to breakdown the data down analytically because some subsamples will be vulnerable to being identified. As for the underlying rationale for our proposed research, here is a brief explanation of why we choose to focus on discourse and networks. With respect to the former, many members of the project team have training and background that converges in a recognition in the fundamental role of discourse, including: Stacie Holloway’s training in management and experience in human resources and organization development; Steve Howe’s experience in organization development; and Rachel Kallen’s expertise with the theory of stereotype threat, which can be activated or diffused via discourse. Further, discourse is fluid and plastic. Our top-down programming can easily introduce new themes and content into the discourse of the university, and it is this which we wish to capture and analyze in our study. At the same time, our bottom-up programming will inform our discourse analysis by helping us identify problem areas and themes to search for in the corpus of communications we compile. Our rational for focusing on networks is grounded in our belief that success in the STEM disciplines is highly influenced by the network of professional relationships, both formal and informal, in which one works and by our existing expertise (primarily Stacie Holloway) in network analysis as a research technique. Study 1: Discourse analysis

Conceptual framework: It is increasingly acknowledged that discourse is the basis of the organizational environment (e.g., Alvesson & Karreman, 2000; Taylor & Cooren, 1997), with these discourses embedded with cultural expression (Alvesson & Karreman, 2000; Fairhurst, 2004). The structure of communication determines how an issue is discussed, behavior during conversation, and resulting knowledge (Hall, 2001). In turn, communication can result in larger schemas about self and others (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997) becoming instrumental in directing related behaviors. Language can therefore be studied to reveal the underlying power structures and ideology of an institution and the pathways through which it influences institutional outcomes (Hardy, 2004). Discourse analysis examines how language is used to communicate knowledge, identity, and social relationships within an institutional framework (Luke, 1996). This technique is commonly

2 �

used to investigate how power relationships are transmitted and social identities are constructed (Van Dijk, 1993). Discourse analysis avoids the pitfalls of self-report by analyzing real world communications. When using messaging through electronic mediums like e-mail, people are less likely to consciously control for subtle biases and dominance may be manifested through verbal mechanisms such as rhetoric, semantics, turn-taking, formality, and positive and negative representations (Van Dijk, 1993). UC ADVANCE can gain understanding of the underlying beliefs of the organization and the information transmitted to its members by examining commonplace interactions.

Method: A number of electronic documents will be sampled, extending from two years prior to UC ADVANCE, through the first four years of the project. These documents will include departmental and college documents for STEM disciplines such as (a) bylaws, (b) workload policies, (c) reappointment, promotion, and tenure policies, and (d) hiring proposals. With the cooperation of the heads and deans, we do not anticipate any difficulty obtaining these documents for the entire six-year period of focus. The documents that we examine will also include web pages for the STEM disciplines. At the University of Cincinnati, these web pages include links to announcements and media stories about UC faculty and students. Our ability to reach back two years will probably be limited to archived announcements and media stories still linked to the sites we will review and monitor. Additionally, we will examine media distributed across the university. For example, the frequency with which the achievements of URM STEM women are highlighted in college magazines and e-newsletters relative to male and non-minority peers. Finally, the documents that we examine will include top-down email communications relevant to STEM disciplines. These will include all communications from the so-called Triple-D listserv (deans, directors, and department heads). They will also include all communications from deans to all department heads or to the entire faculty of the college, and all communications from heads of STEM disciplines to all faculty in a unit. Our means of obtaining these email communications will very simply be to request that a member of our research team be included on relevant distribution lists. Throughout the first four years of ADVANCE, this corpus will be continuously updated. A number of our analyses will be based on straightforward coding of the documents. Some examples of these coding efforts include (a) hiring proposals in which diversity considerations are highlighted, (b) news releases featuring women STEM scientists, and (c) emails that touch on matters of diversity. But we will also, and perhaps more importantly, develop coding systems that enable us to identify and code subtler indicators of culture that are relevant to the ability of STEM women to succeed. Data coding will be developed through informed adaptation of the grounded theory approach that involves using inductive reasoning to generate theory of an organization originally advocated by Glaser and Strauss (1967). More specifically, the current project will employ a grounded theory perspective later modified by Strauss that allows the researcher to start with basic research questions and problems (Corbin & Strauss, 1990; Devadas, Silong, & Ismail, 2011). This perspective has a constructivist approach which encourages the researcher to take into account context and the subjective experiences of the participants, something typically restricted in the Glaserian tradition (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Devadas, Silong, & Ismail, 2011). Theory is based on data, not a priori hypotheses. By adapting theory to identifiable real world occurrences, it is made more functional within the context of a given organization. We will therefore identify patterns of communication to gain a clearer picture of social interactions within UC, and base theories of change off of this information. In addition to examining the experiences of women, data analyses will focus on messages which deal directly and indirectly with racial and ethnic minorities, and grounded theory will be carefully applied to these various subgroups.

There will be important feedback loops between our programmatic activities and development of

3 �

the coding systems. Suppose, as one example, that our advisory committee help us advance our understanding of how hiring proposals can be structured so as to support improved numbers of applications from women, and especially URM STEM women scientists. Perhaps we will learn that our hiring proposals can be enhanced in three distinct ways that go beyond the pro forma declarations of equal opportunity. With this enhanced understanding of what we could be doing, we can go back and code or recode all hiring proposals to see what we are doing. As another example, suppose our bottom-up change efforts suggest that women STEM scientists would view their workplace cultures more positively if there were greater acknowledgement of some specific work-life balance issues. With this insight from our programming, we can look at emails distributed to the faculty and code them for evidence that these themes are addressed, and if so are they addressed in a positive fashion. (Once the coding is accomplished, then of course we would produce quantitative data on the number of instances identified, by year, gender, etc.)

Hypotheses: A baseline of communication will be assessed by examining data from the two years previous to NSF ADVANCE funding. It is hypothesized that following this period, social inequality, as expressed through written language, will decrease. Conversely, supportive communications toward women in STEM will increase. Satisfaction with work, based on annual surveys from women in STEM, will be expressed in regular communication, correlating with unit level differences in communications. These changes in communication will vary by STEM unit in ways that are explicable from other data (logic models, key informant interviews, etc.).

Study 2: Network Analysis Conceptual framework: Social relationships and intra-organizational networking have repeatedly been shown to predict career success (e.g., Sparrowe, Liden, Wayne, & Kraimer, 2001). Social networks can provide social support as well as access to mentoring, advocacy, and other activities essential to career development (Seibert, Kraimer, & Liden, 2001). However, building social networks may become difficult when STEM women enter into an area where they are significantly outnumbered by their male colleagues and are judged, implicitly or explicitly, to be less competent outsiders. Social networks may also be more difficult for women to develop and sustain because they are more likely than men to experience conflicting work-home demands. Accordingly, institutional efforts to create a more inclusive climate that is supportive of women STEM faculty can significantly impact their ability to develop the social networks associated with greater career satisfaction and success. Thus, a key component to analyzing the success of ADVANCE entails assessing the social climate by examining those networks - the real connections between men and women STEM faculty within and external to UC – and the outcomes associated with those networks.

Method: All women involved in learning communities during years 1-4 of the grant will be invited to participate in this study by outlining their networks on an annual basis using procedures outlined below. We expect a final sample size of at least 120 people and perhaps as many as 240, which should provide sufficient power to detect meaningful differences between men and women and year to year measures of network size and value. At the end of the study, we will have four years of data from LC participants in year one, three years of data from participants in year two, etc. To compare the size, strength, and outcomes associated with men’s and women’s networks, we will also invite men to participate. This subgroup of men will be nominated by women peers in their department. If they decline, we will work with the women participants to find another match. To codify participants’ social networks, each will be asked, once per year, to provide a list of potential references. To be included on a reference list, participants must be at least 90% certain

4 �

that the nominated references would write a letter of recommendation for him or her. Participants will be prompted to include names of references who could write in response to narrow prompts such as “community leadership,” “university service,” etc., in addition to names of people who could provide comprehensive career progress and impact evaluations.� � Beyond reporting potential references, participants will submit a list of support people. Participants may submit as many names as they wish, but each person listed should be someone that the person knows he or she could rely on for help or support. In addition to a general category of professional career support, we will prompt for specific kinds of support people, such as “proposal editing,” “conflict with supervisor,” and “advice on work-life balance.” When a reference or support person is not a UC employee, the participant will be asked for their title and organization. After writing their lists, participants will be asked to complete a short questionnaire that assesses degree of satisfaction with their reference and support groups and the perceived utility of their networks in achieving life and career goals. They will be prompted not to evaluate specific individuals, but rather to rate their degree of satisfaction with categories of references and support people and the usefulness of those categories for goal attainment in specific domains such as publishing, funding, career advancement, etc. In addition, participants will be asked each year to indicate what three steps they plan to take in the coming year to increase the depth and value of their network. The following years, we will ask for feedback to these answers to the participants (but only these answers, not names generated) and ask the women to evaluate the success of their planned efforts. While participants will self-report satisfaction and perceived utility of their networks, we will also be able to more objectively evaluate those networks using social network software technology that can assess the size and strength of the social networks reported by participants. Changes in networks will also be assessed by counting, for each person in our sample, the number of new ties that emerged between each time period (e.g., ties that existed at T2 but not at T1). Additionally, we will examine how the composition of networks changes over time, by examining the characteristics of those new ties (e.g., rank, discipline). In theory, new ties that are distinct to the network (e.g., someone from a different discipline or rank within the University not previously included in the network) should be of greater utility to an individual because they bring new knowledge, connections, or resources. Additionally, we will supplement self-reported career outcomes with more objective faculty-relevant outcomes, including publications, funding, and citations. All of this information is available from public sources (e.g., SCOPUS) for both participants and their nominated references and will be reduced to quantitative indices that can be used in comparing subsamples. Administrators will be asked to make predictions about reported network depth and value among men and women STEM scientists. Approximately 10 department heads, directors, and deans will be interviewed. Questions will inquire about their perceptions about women’s satisfaction with work, amount of supportive communication, and network equality between the genders.

Hypotheses: While it is hypothesized that men in year one will have more valuable social networks, it is anticipated that the work of UC ADVANCE will over time lead women to have networks that closely resemble their male peers. In year one, men will likely have richer, deeper, and self-assessed more valuable support networks, as well as support networks that include a larger number of more senior colleagues. However, women participants in the ADVANCE program will close the above gaps with their male peers over the course of the research program. Overall, STEM women’s supportive communications and exposure to senior level (male and

5 �

female) leadership will increase over study period, and this increase will correspond with higher levels of satisfaction with work as reported in annual surveys. Change in communications will vary by STEM unit in ways that are explicable from other data (logic models, key informant interviews, etc.) As with the first two studies, racial and ethnic minority women will be assessed as subgroups as well as with other STEM scientist women. It is predicted that minority women will initially have greater discrepancies in network depth and value. Over time, these networks will also become more similar to those of other women and men. Regarding the administrators interviewed, it is anticipated that they will overestimate equality in networks between the genders and the amount of supportive communications and underestimate the utility of women’s networks. However, it is believed that women’s networks will become increasingly in line with administrative expectations. Unfortunately, the numbers of women STEM scientists of color at UC is so small that our test of this hypothesis is likely to be grossly under-powered. Nevertheless, the simple descriptive results can be used for educating the LEAF team and the UC community about the networks of women STEM scientists of color.

Implications: It is important to note that a feedback loop exists between the research and training components of the LEAF program, such that findings from the social network analyses will be used to inform subsequent programming and administrative efforts beyond the ways mentioned earlier. It is possible, for instance, that Year 1 data show the networks of STEM women are smaller and less diverse (e.g., primarily intra-disciplinary) than those reported by STEM men. Consequently, women may feel less satisfied with their networks and view them as less valuable than their male counterparts. In this case, special workshop sessions may be developed to educate women on the value of network development and to provide opportunities (e.g., through guest speakers or special assignments) to expand their networks in targeted ways. Simultaneously, as this data is shared with the AAC, new top-down efforts to encourage and monitor the mentoring of STEM women may emerge. References� �

Alvesson, M., & Karreman, D. (2000). Taking the linguistic turn in organizational research: Challenges, responses and consequences. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 36, 136-158. doi: 10.1177/0021886300362002

Corbin, J. M., & Strauss, A. (1990). Grounded theory research: Procedures, canons, and evaluative criteria. Qualitative Sociology, 13, 3-21. doi: 10.1007/BF00988593

Devadas, U. M., Silong, A. D., & Ismail, I. A. (2011). The relevance of Glaserian and Straussian grounded theory: Approaches in researching human resource development. Internatinoal Journal of Modeling and Optimization, 11, 348-352. Retrieved November 1, 2011 from http://www.ipedr.com/vol11/67-W10043.pdf

Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T. A. Van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction (Vol. 2, pp. 258-284). London: Sage.

Fairhurst, G. T., & Putnam, L. (2004). Organizations as discursive constructions. Communication Theory, 14, 5-26. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2885.2004.tb00301.x

Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine.

Luke, A. (1996). Text and discourse in education: An introduction to critical discourse analysis. Review of Research in Education, 21, 3-48. doi: 10.2307/1167278

Seibert, S. E., Kraimer, M. L., & Liden, R. C. (2001). A social capital theory of career success. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 219-237.

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Sparrowe, R. T., Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., & Kraimer, M. L. (2001). Social networks and the performance of individuals and groups. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 316-325.

Taylor, J. R., & Cooren, F. (1997). What makes communication “organizational”? How the many voices of a collectivity become the one voice of an organization. Journal of Pragmatics, 27, 409-438. doi: 10.1016/SO378-2166(96)00044-6

Van Dijk, T. A. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse Society, 4, 249-283. doi: 10.1177/0957926593004002006

�

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Part 2: Issues Affecting Women of Color

Integration of ADVANCE activities targeted to Underrepresented (URM) STEM women faculty

Racial and ethnic minority women, as well as other disadvantaged groups of women represent “tremendous untapped human capital” (Ong, Wright, Espinosa, & Orfield, 2011: 172) and a valued source of talent needed to sustain economic vitality and social equality in the U.S. and abroad. Yet, at the University of Cincinnati, URM faculty representation within the STEM disciplines is strikingly low. As Table 1 below illustrates, only 5 women of color hold assistant professor appointments across the various STEM disciplines and the University employs only 1 woman of color at the rank of full in the STEM disciplines. As can also be seen below, we have not included the remaining URM categories in the table, as the University has no representation for such women. Thus, women of color are disproportionately underrepresented.

Table 1 Representation of Women of Color within STEM Disciplines

Black/African

American Hispanic Asian

(non-URM) Unknown/Non-r

esident Alien Ast As

o Full Ast As

o Full Ast As

o Full Ast As

o Full

A&S Anthropology 1 Biological Sciences 1

Chemistry 1 Geography 1 Mathematical Sciences 3 1 2 Physics 1 Psychology 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Total 1 0 1 2 0 0 4 3 5 1 0 1CEAS Dynamic Systems 1 1

Energy, Environmental, Biological and Medical Engineering

2

Total 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 1 0 0 0 CMED Cancer and Cell Biology 1 Environmental Health 1 1

Endocrinology 1 Ob-Gyn 1 1 Ophthalmology 1 Pathology and Lab Medicine

2 1 1

Total 1 0 0 1 0 0 4 3 1 1 0 0 Compounding the data shown above is evidence that shows a dearth of underrepresented women applying for and being hired into STEM faculty positions at UC. For instance, during the 2009-2012 period, 49 new faculty were hired across the three STEM colleges (Medicine, Engineering & Applied Science, and A&S). Only two of these hires were underrepresented women (both Hispanic). Further, none of the 135 applications received for the 49 positions were from African American women. To fully address the issues that women experience in STEM, women of color must be recognized as a diverse group with unique individual experiences, particularly as they experience the effects of the intersectionality of their double-minority status (i.e., the double bind effect), whereby they

Rachel Kallen

8 �

are disadvantaged based on multiple minority identities. For instance, URM women faculty often report feeling invisible or isolated within their departments (Turner, 2002), challenged in the classroom to defend their authority or expertise (Pittman, 2010), and emotionally drained by having to negotiate perceived racism at work (Turner, 2002). At an individual level, these experiences may reduce job and career satisfaction and prompt greater attrition from the field. Research also shows that URM women are more likely to work in two-year and non-doctoral-granting four-year colleges and universities than white women faculty and minority men faculty. They are also likely to spend more of their time on instructional efforts (rather than research) than are their minority men counterparts (Malcolm & Malcolm, 2011). As these experiences tend to be devalued at traditional four-year doctoral degree awarding institutions, implicit career barriers tend to surface for this group of women faculty. Given the preceding information, it is critical that LEAF activities and outcomes be structured in ways that address the unique needs of UC’s URM STEM women faculty. This will occur in several ways as outlined below: x As part of our top-down transformation effort, issues of diversity and inclusion will be

incorporated into training provided to senior leaders. This training will include topics such as selection bias in the recruitment and development processes (e.g., annual review, RPT), as well as training on how to conduct a broad and well-balanced searches that proactively seek qualified minority candidates. Key outcomes associated with such efforts, which will be tracked and monitored over time, include a greater number of qualified URM STEM women applicants and hires within STEM, as well as promotion and retention all ranks. As detailed below, data from the social science studies and from program evaluation efforts will be used to inform the content and structure of training efforts.

x Diversity issues will also be woven into bottom-up change efforts in several ways. o Activities and discussion regarding diversity and inclusion will be incorporated into the

three workshop series for women faculty. In particular, at least one workshop session will focus on diversity-related issues and the unique challenges associated with “double minority” status for women of color. Workshop leaders will at first be necessarily from urban institutions with similar demographics as UC, but later, we will incorporate our own URM STEM women as they move through the LEAF program.

o In addition to the three learning communities (LCs) created to support all STEM women at various career stages, URM STEM women will have the option to join a 4th LC that specifically serves URM STEM women faculty. This LC will provide opportunities for URM STEM women to network not only with one another but with senior-level colleagues internal and external to UC invited to serve as guest speakers, panelists, visiting scholars, and mentors. Learning communities and networking opportunities have been significant components of multiple efforts to enhance minority student recruitment and retention (e.g., Goodchild & Aquirre, 2009). We expect similar outcomes at the faculty level.

o Faculty development opportunities specifically targeting URM STEM women faculty will also be provided. Specifically, the LEAF Award program will provide more than $20,000 each year to faculty participants representing various career stages. A minimum of 3 Seed and Career grants per year will be awarded to junior and senior faculty, respectively, through a competitive process. At least one of each of these awards is designated for URM STEM women. Similarly, a minimum of 3 Professional Development grants will be awarded, with at least one designated for URM STEM women to support, for example, attendance at training workshops external to UC.

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x The two Social Science research projects will also allow us to gather qualitative and quantitative data to assess how the climate for diversity and inclusion evolves over time.

o The social network study will provide the data needed to compare the size and strength of networks for URM STEM women faculty to those of men (of all races) and non-minority women faculty. Having a network of racial and ethnic peers outside of STEM majors has been shown to increase minority students’ sense of belonging and social integration (Tate & Linn, 2005). Thus, UC’s LEAF will promote networking and empirically test whether career and social support in the workplace leads to improved outcomes for URM STEM women faculty. To the extent that we find that these networks are insufficient, we will design interventions (e.g., networking events, workshops focused on building networks) to support greater network development.

o Discourse analysis will also be used to examine the content and frequency with which diversity and inclusion issues are communicated through the University’s formal communication and media channels. As noted in the Social Science supplement, we will be able to examine, for instance, the frequency with which the achievements of URM STEM women are highlighted in College magazines and e-newsletters relative to male and non-minority female peers. Alternatively, we will be able to examine the relative weight (i.e., print space) used to communicate diversity and inclusion issues through various departmental, college, and university media. Should we identify a lower frequency of recognition for URM STEM women faculty as we gather this information, we will assert proactive interventions by calling upon the URM STEM women to self-report and direct these achievements to the Public Relations Department at the University for dissemination. We have worked with the PR Department in the past and they are quite cooperative in publicizing faculty achievements.

Implicit in our programming and research efforts is the belief that the challenges URM STEM women faculty face today are often more subtle than they were decades ago. As Malcolm and Malcolm (2011: 164) argue, “Now it is less about rights versus wrongs and more about support versus neglect; less about the behavior of individuals and a culture that was accepting of bias as the ‘natural order of things’ and more about the responsibilities and action (or inaction) of institutions.” Accordingly, several accountability measures will be in place to ensure that we monitor and sustain the preceding efforts at the department, college, and institutional level.

x A senior-level faculty WOC will be identified to serve as Coordinator of LEAF Diversity

Initiatives. Funds have been added to support the Coordinator’s efforts, which will include oversight of LEAF’s efforts to support women of color. As a member of the leadership team, she will work with the program directors to monitor and facilitate those activities (e.g., LCs, sponsorships) developed in support of URM STEM women faculty. She will also serve as a member of the Internal Advisory Board and have a discretionary fund to spend as needed on new or supplemental efforts to support URM STEM women faculty(e.g., workshops, LC’s, best practices consultations).

x Departments will be collaboratively brought into activity planning and assessment involving URM STEM women. LEAF-sponsored facilitators will assist departments as they develop logic models for unit-level transformation that include goals and activities targeted specifically to women from underrepresented groups. Evaluation efforts will, accordingly, disaggregate findings for URM STEM women faculty wherever possible. Evaluation results will feed back into the programming system, serving as a “needs analysis” to inform training, workshop, LC, best practice seminars, and other content in subsequent years.

10 �

x Supporting both of these measures is UC’s commitment to diversity and inclusion as specified in UC2019 (http://www.uc.edu/president/strategic_plan.html), our university’s strategic plan. The mission of UC2019 is:

The University of Cincinnati serves the people of Ohio, the nation, and the world as a premier, public, urban research university dedicated to undergraduate, graduate, and professional education, experience-based learning, and research. We are committed to excellence and diversity in our students, faculty, staff, and all of our activities. We provide an inclusive environment where innovation and freedom of intellectual inquiry flourish. Through scholarship, service, partnerships, and leadership, we create opportunity, develop educated and engaged citizens, enhance the economy and enrich our university, city, state and global community. References Goodchild, F. M. & Aguirre, M. O. (2009). Addressing Diversity in STEM Education: Authenticity

and Integration. MRS Proceedings, 1233 , 1233-PP01-05 doi:10.1557/PROC-1233-PP01-05 Malcolm, L.E., & Malcolm, S.M. (2011). The double bind: The next generation of women.

Harvard Educational Review, 81, 162-171. National Science Foundation [NSF], Division of Science Resources Statistics. (2009). Women,

minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering. NSF 09-305. Retrieved from http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/pdf/nsf09305.pdf.

Ong, M., Wright, C., Espinosa, L.L., & Orfield, G. (2011). Inside the double bind: A synthesis of empirical research on undergraduate and graduate women of color in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Harvard Educational Review, 81, 172-208.

Pittman, C. T. (2010). Race and gender oppression in the classroom: The experiences of women faculty of color with White male students. Teaching Sociology, 38, 183-196. doi: 10.1177/0092055X10370120

Tate, E. D., & Linn, M. C. (2005). How does identity shape the experiences of Women of Color engineering students? Journal of Science Education and Technology, 14, 483–493.

Turner, C. S. V. (2002). Women of color in academe: Living with multiple marginality. The Journal of Higher Education, 73, 74-93.

University of Michigan. (2004). Assessing the academic work environment for faculty of color in science and engineering. National Science Foundation ADVANCE report: University of Michigan. Retrieved from http://www.advance.rackham.umich.edu/S&E%20Race-Ethnicity%20Report.pdf

University of Michigan. (2008). Assessing the academic work environment for science and engineering faculty at the University of Michigan in 2001 and 2006: Gender and Race in Retention-relevant career experiences. . National Science Foundation ADVANCE report: University of Michigan. Retrieved from http://www.advance.rackham.umich.edu/mentoring.pdf.

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