ADVANCE Leadership Award: Collaborative Proposal - FORWARD to Professorship

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The University of Oklahoma, the George Washington University and GallaudetUniversity join together for a three-year collaborative effort to enhance, present andassess the FORWARD to Professorship workshop for pre-tenured women in science,engineering and mathematics (SEM). The workshop has been developed and presentedthree times under a previous ADVANCE Leadership award. The need persists: each yearthe workshops are oversubscribed and participants report satisfaction from, and enthusiasm for, the workshop experience. Between 87 and 99 percent of the participants rated the sessions as good or excellent in this last year (2005) and 100% of the participants said they would recommend it to their colleagues. In the next three years, the collaborative team plans:__ to continue the workshop,__ to enhance specific elements of the workshop such as the negotiation segment,__ to extend the coverage to include a new component entitled MIND THE GAP inwhich they will concentrate on women who have had or are planning a SEM careerinterruption,__ to develop a support structure beyond the workshop, and__ to do more detailed evaluation and assessment.__ Finally, the co-PIs will work with their respective institutions to create lasting changewith respect to diversity in the faculty ranks.The intellectual merit of the project lies in the development of cross-disciplinary skillstraining methods and materials for women (and men) contemplating, or in, tenure-trackfaculty positions, the creation of a community of women with similar high level trainingin SEM disciplines that can be reached and studied over a number of years, and a studyof the situation for women in SEM career interruptions.The broader impacts of the project are extensive. The project aims to broaden theparticipation of women, minorities and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in the faculty ranks,thereby contributing to the national need to diversify the SEM workforce. The projectprovides access to role models in these populations as well as a support network, both of which will enhance success rates in the academy. This increased success will in turn influence the student population in SEM disciplines. The project also influences and creates systemic change in institutions of higher education by informing the incoming classes of faculty, as well as deans and chairs through their participation in the workshop and in the findings. Graduate and undergraduate students will also learn from working on the project and be encouraged to pursue a path leading to professorship.