Inhalt: The NSF ADVANCE program represents one of the most far reaching gender equity efforts implemented jointly by a government agency and institutions of higher education. Focusing on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, in 2001, an inaugural group of universities received NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation (IT) awards to increase the representation of women faculty in science and engineering. To date, a total of five cohorts of 44 institutions of higher education have received the award, and the 19 institutions comprising the 2001 and 2003 cohorts have completed their five-year projects. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of recruitment programs and practices developed by Cohort 1 ADVANCE institutions in an effort to increase the representation of women faculty. Towards this end, we focus on changes in the number of women faculty at the assistant professor rank in colleges of engineering at seven Cohort 1 ADVANCE institutions. We examine performance during both the 2001-2006 grant period, and the sustained impact of ADVANCE by examining the trajectory of colleges of engineering up through the three years following receipt of the grant (2006-2009). Using these changes as an indicator of the effectiveness of recruitment programs, we determine which colleges of engineering associated with Cohort 1 universities show stronger performance. Subsequently, we compare the key components of recruitment programs initiated at both stronger and weaker performing institutions during the ADVANCE grant period. - Our analysis of changes during the grant period reveals that four out of seven colleges of engineering added between four and seven women to the faculty at the assistant professor rank, and two institutions added one female assistant professor each. Georgia Tech's College of Engineering, where the number of female assistant professors fell by four, constitutes an exception to this overall trend. A longer term view (2001-2009) reveals that all colleges of engineering showed net positive changes, with Georgia Tech increasing the number of female faculty and the University of Washington showing a decline in the three years after the grant ended (2006-2009). Our comparative analysis of recruitment efforts suggests that, with the exception of the University of Colorado at Boulder, the hallmark of the stronger performers is the comprehensive nature and integration of recruitment programs into the overarching institutional transformation strategies. In contrast, the weaker performers had programs that a) focused on select aspects of recruitment, b) did not have a pre-ADVANCE history of recruitment efforts, and 3) did not develop mechanisms to facilitate connections across different institutional transformation initiatives. Importantly, in the outlying case of Georgia Tech, recruitment was not an ADVANCE objective; instead the main focus of the grant was on building women's leadership capacity. While the net loss of female faculty at junior level may indicate a weakness in recruitment efforts during the 2001-2006 period, it does not imply a major weakness in the overall institutional transformation strategy which may yield very promising results in the long term.
Schlagwörter:academic recruitment; ADVANCE; wissenschaftliche Personaleinstellung
CEWS Kategorie:Berufungsverfahren
Dokumenttyp:Zeitschriftenaufsatz