NSF Award
2037438
The Promoting Diverse and Inclusive Leadership in the Geosciences project will develop and test a framework that incentivizes and rewards Inclusive Leaders in the Geosciences through changes in faculty workload policy and annual evaluations. The PIs will use a collective impact approach to engage the faculty and student partners in the process. The framework will identify training activities and evidence-based illustrative practices related to becoming and growing as Inclusive Leaders. In order to create long-term systemic change, the faculty workload policy and annual evaluation process will be amended to include this framework. Department chairs and faculty will create these amendments iteratively with support from the Dean and Provost at Boise State University. This work will first be performed at Boise State and then tested independently at Idaho State University (ISU) in order to ensure that it is adaptable to other Geoscience units at other universities across the country. Through the framework, PIs plan to provide a mechanism to institutionalize the importance, value, and recognition of leaders in diversity and inclusion. Importantly, the results and the adaptable framework will be available to other programs and departments.<br/><br/>This project develops the novel approach of changing policy strategies to develop and support Inclusive Leaders in Geosciences. By altering the department workload policy and annual evaluation process governing rewardable actions, the PIs will identify different avenues for faculty to be rewarded for becoming and growing as Inclusive Leaders. Importantly, the process will include the student voice, thus incorporating what constitutes inclusivity from a student perspective, as well as building a pathway for future Inclusive Leaders. By both developing and testing the strategies at two institutions, the PIs will advance knowledge in how to support and sustain these leaders. This project seeks to develop novel approaches in 1) valuing and rewarding individual faculty Inclusive Leaders, and 2) engineering a road map for success that will be both long-lived and transferable to other Geoscience departments.<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.
