William & Mary Women In Scientific Education (WISE) Initiative

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The College of William and Mary is proposing a host of activities to advance women in academic STEM at their own institution as well as two nearby institutions, Richard Bland College and Thomas Nelson Community College. The project has three primary goals and a variety of initiatives to accomplish their goals. The main goal involves career development and mentoring. Initiatives surrounding this goal include an ambitious slate of workshops to promote scholarly writing and professional development. Also a leadership forum and a visiting female scientist program will be initiated. Organic mentoring will be encouraged through one-day annual retreats for all STEM female faculty across the three campuses. The project also includes a variety of research grant opportunities for the STEM women across the campuses. The second goal of the proposal combines efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of the programming described above with research based in the social science literature surrounding the reduction of implicit gender bias. The third goal of the proposal is to increase inter-institutional collaborations among the three participating institutions. INTELLECTUAL MERITThis proposal is well written and developed. The initiatives focused on promoting the research agendas of the STEM women are particularly strong and well suited to the needs of less research-intensive institutions. The social science research component of the proposal is very well grounded in the literature and represents a robust, real-life test of possible mechanisms to change implicit bias. The PIs have taken some of the strongest and most successful ADVANCE programming and adapted it appropriately to their context. BROADER IMPACTSThe collaborative nature of the programming presents a nice opportunity for broader impacts by including STEM faculty at two primarily undergraduate institutions and a community college. The three campuses have over 100 STEM, women, full-time faculty. The social science research is positioned to contribute importantly to the scientific literature on the reduction of implicit bias. The success of these programs, combined with empirical support for a reduction in implicit bias can lead to a replicable model among similar institutions.