Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning
Volume 47, Issue 4, 2015
By Sandra L. Laursen, Ann E. Austin, Melissa Soto, and Dalinda Martinez
Sandra Laursen (sandra.laursen@colorado.edu) is a senior research associate and co-director of Ethnography & Evaluation Research, University of Colorado Boulder. Ann E. Austin (aaustin@msu.edu) is a professor in the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education program at Michigan State University. Laursen and Austin are co-investigators on a research study of organizational-change strategies in ADVANCE Institutional Transformation (IT) projects. Melissa Soto (soto@aacu.org) and Dalinda Martinez (dali@msu.edu) were both involved in this research as graduate students. Soto is now director for undergraduate STEM education at the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and Martinez is a doctoral student in higher education at Michigan State.
In Short:
- To increase the involvement of women in STEM fi elds requires not just supporting individual women but the system-wide identification and removal of gender biases in institutional policies and processes.
- NSF’s ADVANCE IT program has led to the development of a portfolio of interventions that campuses can adapt to their own contexts to advance the careers of STEM women. These include faculty development, grants to individual faculty, mentoring and networking, the development of leaders, inclusive recruiting and hiring, equitable tenure and promotion policies, strengthened accountability, flexible work arrangements, family-friendly accommodations, support for dual-career couples, improved departmental climates, invitations to visiting female scholars, and enhanced visibility for women and women’s issues.
- Many of these strategies address the needs of men and women in all disciplines. Moreover, the same intervention can achieve multiple goals, and the same general goal can be addressed in multiple ways.
- The StratEGIC Toolkit—Strategies for Effecting Gender Equity and Institutional Change (www.strategicToolkit.org)—distills lessons learned about 13 main types of interventions, each presented in the form of a Strategic Intervention Brief.