NSF Award
0929997
This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).<br/><br/>The Marshall University (MU)-ADVANCE Program, established in 2006, capitalized on Marshall's existing human resources by establishing faculty-administrator partnerships to oversee the Program's initiatives: Recruitment, Faculty Development, and State and Institutional Policy Changes. Reporting directly to Academic Affairs, the Program works in partnership with six campus offices: Equity Programs, Career Services, Multicultural Affairs, Institutional Research, the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CTL), and the MU Research Corporation. The inclusion of Administrative Partners in the analysis and review of existing barriers to the success of female STEM faculty has led to the development of work/life policies, programs, and best practices that have built-in administrative support. The objectives for this project are to 1) continue to support pre-tenure female STEM faculty; 2) coordinate faculty recruitment, retention, and policy efforts with the university offices that will sustain them; and 3) establish a Path Forward Committee to monitor the progress of institutionalization.<br/><br/>During this project, MU-ADVANCE will work with university offices to build sustainability for the recruitment, retention, and policy efforts. Recruitment efforts will be coordinated with Equity Programs to implement improved search procedures. To support this implementation, MU-ADVANCE will continue to provide liaisons to STEM search committees, and will maintain a reporting procedure for hiring departments and their college offices that will provide information about the diversity of the applicant pool, the interviewees, and the hires. The Dual Career Services is already a university-wide program sustained by MU Career Services. This service will be expanded by collaborating with neighboring institutions' career development officers. Faculty Development efforts in collaboration with CTL will focus on a university-wide comprehensive new faculty support program for faculty within their first two years, which is a critical transition time when Marshall experiences significant STEM faculty attrition. This program will begin with New Faculty Orientation and continue with a fall Seminar Teaching Series and spring Research Boot Camp, a program that offers new faculty an opportunity for intensive, focused, distraction-free, supervised writing time; thus helping them make steady progress in their specific projects. MU-ADVANCE and CTL will also develop a permanent mentoring program for new faculty based on MU-ADVANCE's coaching sessions which have helped new faculty form networks within Marshall and the community. Efforts to retain tenure-track STEM faculty will continue through strong individualized support and networking. The Policy Committee will conduct ongoing research on faculty teaching loads and salaries, and continue the review of university policies and practices. This Committee will be sustained as the Policy Advisory Committee, which will report to Academic Affairs. University evaluation has been the driving force used to identify barriers and to guide the development of focused plans for each of the Program's initiatives. In collaboration with the Office of Multicultural Affairs, MU-ADVANCE will expand data collection to include the status of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities for our entire campus. A permanent Path Forward Committee, housed within Academic Affairs and reporting to the Provost, will oversee the institutionalization of these efforts. <br/><br/>Because West Virginia (WV) women are among the least likely to succeed professionally and have the lowest levels of education in the country, programs such as MU-ADVANCE are of critical importance. Of Marshall's student population, 56% of undergraduates and 70% of graduate students are female, many of whom are first generation college students. While 41.5% of the faculty at Marshall are women, only 27% of the STEM faculty are women. Therefore, the MU-ADVANCE Program's impact on the number of female faculty represents a broader impact of providing much-needed role models for WV students. In addition, MU-ADVANCE's faculty development programs help female STEM faculty balance and integrate their teaching and service commitments, while building competitive research programs. This increase in research activity has the potential to increase external funding, providing the state of WV, and the metropolitan area of Huntington, economic development opportunities. MU-ADVANCE and the WV Division of Science and Research will develop a state-wide project to disseminate institutional transformation methods. This project will include evaluation (e.g., climate surveys, the status of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities) to provide a data-driven approach to support diversity efforts, create family-friendly atmospheres, and foster faculty development activities at WV colleges and universities.
