ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Award

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The goal of this project is to contribute to the development of a national science and engineering academic workforce that includes the full participation of women in all levels of faculty and academic administration, particularly at the senior academic ranks through the transformation of institutional practices, policies, climate and culture. The central administration of UCI is committed to diversity and equity and realizes that to maintain and increase its competitive edge the problems contributing to the low representation of women in academic science and engineering need to be addressed. This sense of urgency is compounded by the impending growth of the campus as a result of 'Tidal Wave II'. With the influx of new students comes a rare opportunity to hire up to 50 new faculty, which added to the turnover in hiring, results in a projection of more than 80 new hires a year for the next decade. UCI intends to seize this opportunity to transform UCI into a diverse campus with flexible approaches and innovative solutions to problems that affect both science and the training of the workforce of the future.UCI's goals are: to increase the recruitment of women into Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology (SMET) disciplines, provide a network of support and guidance through to tenure, monitor progress by collecting and analyzing data about the objective and subjective aspects of equity, promote networking and mentoring activities for tenured women to ensure that they develop to their fullest potential, including facilitating nominations for awards at the local, national and international levels. To accomplish these goals, UCI will appoint a senior faculty member as an Equity Advisor in each of the 8 SMET schools, to tailor an equity program for that school that meets its particular needs. Their involvement in recruiting will include assisting search committees to develop diverse candidate pools containing highly qualified women. They will also set up a mentoring program for junior faculty based on a successful UCI model. To increase awareness among administrators and search committees of the ways in which our judgment of individuals is altered by their gender, UCI will make use of workshops successfully implemented in the corporate world by one of the faculty. To encourage networking among women scientists, UCI will organize a series of scientific conferences, focused on different scientific disciplines, at which women scientists will be invited to speak about their research. Workshops will allow an exploration of the issues standing in the way of full participation of women in academia, and all faculty, students, and postdoctoral fellows will be invited to participate. Finally, to provide a tangible demonstration of the value of activities that promote gender equity, UCI will establish two ADVANCE Chairs, to be awarded to tenured faculty in the sciences with both excellent academic credentials as well as demonstrated commitment to gender equity. These Chairs will be continued after the period of the grant by funds raised from private donations. To evaluate the success of these strategies, UCI's annual self-assessment surveys will be complemented by two assessments by external evaluators to be conducted in years three and five.This project is supported by the NSF ADVANCE Program. The overall mission of the ADVANCE Program is to increase the participation of women in the scientific and engineering workforce through the increased representation and advancement of women in academic science and engineering careers.