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ADVANCE PAID

Alliance for the Advancement of Florida’s Academic Women in Chemistry and Engineering (AAFAWCE)($600,000)

Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Alliance for the Advancement of Florida’s Academic Women has as its primary goals and objectives the recruitment of women faculty, mentoring and advising academic women at the assistant and associate levels, and the promotion of leadership among academic women. Further, not taking action is likely to be detrimental to the welfare of the nation, now highly dependent on the full employment and inclusion of qualified women, especially in the fields of engineering and chemistry, the centerpiece of our program of work for this proposed project.

This ADVANCE PAID proposal is a call to action to increase the capacity and practices of search committees, administrators, including department chairs, and faculty members to recruit women and also to assure the mentoring of women faculty in academic chemistry and engineering departments in five state universities in Florida: University of South Florida, Florida State University, the University of Florida, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (an historically black institution) and Florida International University (a Hispanic-serving institution).

Our work during the three years of the proposed project focuses on three major project objectives:

  • Recruitment of Women Faculty: To assure the recruitment of women faculty to the sciences and engineering by providing opportunities, best practices and strategies for hiring women faculty in these areas. The workshops, designed by the Women in Science & Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI) program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will cover proven strategies and methodologies, including Running an Effective and Efficient Search Committee; Actively Recruiting an Excellent and Diverse Applicant Pool; and Raising Awareness of Unconscious Assumptions and their Influence on the Evaluation of Candidates. Key participants from all Alliance Institutions will attend an initial Train-the-Trainer(s) workshop conducted by WISELI representatives in a central location and later (years two and three) conduct workshops at participating campuses for search committee chairs, administrators, faculty and human resource staff to begin incorporating these practices into the framework of each institution’s’ practices. Lead administrative officer (VP Research, College of Engineering Deans, etc.) from the five universities will promote and support these workshops and send representatives to the Training workshops during the first year of the project. Our goal is to not lose a single woman faculty member during the three years of the project.

  • Retention of Women Faculty through Mentoring and Advising: To assure the retention of women faculty in the sciences and engineering the Alliance will provide opportunities, infrastructure, and resources for mentoring and advising assistant and associate professors. To facilitate the mentoring and advising process, we will rely upon the practices established by the successful University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) program designed and modified by Evelyn Posey. As an example, the UTEP team has learned that it is important for (a) mentees to select their mentors, (b) mentors be faculty from outside the mentee’s academic department, and (c) male mentors are as effective as female mentors for women mentees. Initial implementations will begin with a Train-the-Trainers program in line with UTEP’s ‘breaking patterns of academic isolation’ during the first year. Subsequently in years two and three, tenure-earning female faculty will be invited to participate in the program, matching tenure-earning women with senior faculty. Mentoring and advising of the participants over years two and three of the program will include Alliance forums, on-line portal, and brown bag lunches. Newly hired tenure-track female faculty will be invited to join the Alliance mentoring network. Our goal over the three years is to involve at least 20-30 mentees on each university campus in our mentoring work.

  • Promotion of Leadership Among Women Faculty: To increase the number of women in chemistry and engineering capitalizing on their leadership skills for career advancement and the attainment of leadership positions. In years one and three of the projected set of activities, the Alliance will provide COACh leadership workshops for women in chemistry, engineering and in the STEM disciplines, particularly those who are motivated and interested in advancing in academic leadership positions. Years one and three of the project are critical in cultivating Alliance participants (year 1) and preparing participants to transition into the final phase of the tenure process and potential leadership roles (year 3) at their respective universities. We anticipate that Alliance supporters and participants will hold leadership roles within the university infrastructure, institutionalizing the Alliance for the Advancement of Florida Academic Women. Our goal is to realize the appointment of at least three women to academic leadership positions on each participating campus.

We intend to include faculty in all the sciences and engineering in our program of activities whenever possible, and as a result, we expect to find by the final year of our program that women faculty are well prepared for promotion across all ranks and for taking on leadership positions in research or in academic leadership positions. We also expect to see increased attention to eligible women doctoral candidates in the STEM sciences and engineering derived from meeting the Alliance’s three objectives.