NSF ADVANCE Informed by Sociological Perspectives and Approaches

The National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Program awarded three to four million- dollar grants, per institution, for initiatives to increase the participation and performance of women in academic science and engineering. The Institutional Transformation awards support approaches and means to improve the climate for women in U.S. academic institutions and to facilitate women’s advancement to the highest academic ranks.

Sociologists have led, co-led, and participated in leadership teams for these initiatives. At the 2006 ASA meetings in Montréal, a panel of sociologists representing four ADVANCE initiatives pro- filed sociology’s importance in shaping the perspectives, approaches, practices, and policies implemented through NSF ADVANCE.

Lisa Frehill, who was principal investigator of New Mexico State University’s (NMSU) ADVANCE initiative and served for a year as the program director of the University of California-Irvine’s initiative, focused on institutional change as a bidirectional process (see article above). She emphasized that key decision makers needed to be engaged as leaders who could set a tone and incorporate diversity into the institutional rewards structure. At the same time, work at the grassroots faculty level was essential to increase faculty members’ sense of belonging to a community that enabled intellectual growth and collaboration. The program at NMSU, for example, sought to make mentoring a normative, multi-level, on-going process. The programming to do so included: (1) all new science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty—men and women—paired with experienced faculty (associate or full professors) in a department different from their own; (2) departments being encouraged and assisted with establishing within-department mentoring programs; (3) associate professors paired with full professors or senior administrators for advancement; and (4) leadership development provided for the 8 to 12 participants from across the entire campus (STEM and non-STEM) with a senior leader as a mentor.

Mary Frank Fox, co-principal investigator of ADVANCE at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), discussed what it means to take an institutional approach to understanding the status of academic women in science and engineering, and how institutional transformation— a fundamentally sociological concept and perspective—is key to improving the advancement of academic women. Fox discussed how the Georgia Tech ADVANCE initiative has taken an “integrated institutional approach,” and what this has involved in terms of strategies and implementation in five key areas: (1) a leadership structure, making and marking advancement of women an institutional priority; (2) an inter-college network of ADVANCE Professors; (3) a formal training process of raising awareness of bias in evaluation, including a web-based instrument, ADEPT; (4) extension and enhancement of family-friendly practices; and (5) a research program that defines the issues and solutions with sociological methods and approaches.

Judith Stepan-Norris,member of the ADVANCE research team at the University of California- Irvine (UCI), addressed the sociological contributions to the program’s analyses of its initiatives. UCI’s ADVANCE program created equity advisors in each school, mentoring programs uniquely suited to the departments, workshops aimed at helping faculty members understand the issues involved in moving up in the university and in their fields, and exit interviews with faculty who departed. Sociological methods informed the surveys of faculty members and department chairs, as well as the analyses of departmental offer letters, workshop effectiveness, and equity advisor’s yearly reports on their efforts in each school. Sociological theories of occupational segregation informed their analysis of faculty workloads.

Jennifer Sheridan, executive and research director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s (UW) ADVANCE Program, discussed three areas in which sociology positively influenced the ADVANCE program. First, sociologists approach problems above the individual level; that is, they have the “sociological imagination.” ADVANCE programs need this perspective in order to revise practices (e.g., hiring or tenure), reform or create policies (e.g., tenure clock extensions), improve departmental or institutional climate, and increase the visibility of women. Second, ADVANCE work draws upon the training that sociologists receive—both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis are essential. Finally, sociologists have a history of using social science to create social change. Sheridan uses the example of a unique workshop series developed by the UW-Madison ADVANCE program, “Enhancing Departmental Climate: A Chair’s Role” to illustrate these three points in the context of a specific ADVANCE intervention.