NSF Award
2121654
The ADVANCE Adaptation: INSPIRED- Inclusive Practices in the Retention and Equity of Diverse Faculty - aims to promote the full participation and advancement of women, underrepresented minorities (URM), and women of color (WoC) faculty at Loyola University Chicago (LUC). INSPIRED seeks to provide comprehensive mentoring, pathways for professional growth, equitable workload policies and practices, and interdisciplinary connections, each important to mitigating the impacts of isolation, marginalization, and tokenism for these faculty. LUC is a Jesuit university in a large urban setting serving a racially and ethnically diverse student body. INSPIRED will combine the Jesuit values of cura personalis (“care for the whole person”) and magis (“striving for excellence in the pursuit of justice and the greater good”) with evidence-based strategies to address racial and gender inequities that impact the success, retention, and advancement of women, URM, and WoC STEM faculty. To address LUC’s structural and institutional barriers to gender and racial equity and the retention of minoritized faculty, this project will: 1) develop university-wide mentoring programs, 2) recruit Faculty Advocates to assist women and URM faculty to advance to full professor, 3) implement practices and policies to mitigate racial and gendered faculty workload inequities, and 4) create opportunities for interdisciplinary work that involves both intellectual and social connections. <br/> <br/>The goals of INSPIRED are to: 1) provide a network of professional support to improve the success, retention, and advancement of women, URM, and WoC faculty; 2) provide pathways for professional growth for women, URM, and WoC faculty that address gender and racial disparities among full professors and senior administration; 3) create policies to mitigate gender and racial faculty workload inequities by working with deans and department chairs to adjust practices and procedures that maintain uneven labor practices; and 4) create an institutional culture of interdisciplinary connection for women, URM, and WoC faculty in STEM fields. By adapting the evidence-based strategies from Syracuse University’s “The Inclusive Connective Corridor: Social Networks and the ADVANCEment of Women STEM Faculty,” the University of Maryland’s Faculty Workload and Rewards Project, and Associate to Full Professor Program, INSPIRED endeavors to effect similar substantive and systemic institutional changes. Formative and summative evaluations will be based on quantitative and qualitative data. INSPIRED aspires to serve as a model within the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities – a network comprised of 28 Jesuit institutions across the country—for how other Jesuit and mission-driven institutions can deploy the tenets of Ignatian Spirituality to promote transformative change in the form of greater gender and racial equity. The NSF ADVANCE program is designed to foster gender equity through a focus on the identification and elimination of organizational barriers that impede the full participation and advancement of diverse faculty in academic institutions. Organizational barriers that inhibit equity may exist in policies, processes, practices, and the organizational culture and climate. ADVANCE “Adaptation” awards provide support for the adaptation and adoption of evidence-based strategies to academic, non-profit institutions of higher education as well as non-academic, non-profit organizations.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
