Engaging Male Colleagues as Advocates and Allies for the Advancement of Women Faculty

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The PLAN-D funding track is designed to expand the application of proven-successful gender-equity initiatives for STEM faculty in a specific disciplinary area through networked adaptation of a specific program or initiative. Careful evaluation is expected to expand understanding of such initiatives in a disciplinary context. The ADVOCATE FORWARD project is designed to improve the recruitment, retention, promotion, and sustainability of women faculty in engineering. North Dakota State University (NDSU), through its ADVANCE program, developed and implemented a signature program called Advocates & Allies (A&A) designed to improve gender equity through the direct and proactive engagement of male faculty. The program is comprised of two-parts: Advocates, senior male faculty who educate themselves about issues of gender [in]equality; and Allies, male faculty whom the Advocates train as proponents for gender equity in their departments. These men serve as change agents, committing to be active and vocal proponents of gender diversity and equality specifically in terms of increasing the number of female faculty, encouraging the hiring and promotion of female faculty in administrative positions, and ensuring the fair and equitable treatment of women within their units. NDSU has seen increased participation of women in all science and engineering faculty and academic administrative positions as a result of its ADVANCE project and the A&A program has been endorsed as a model program by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). This project will test, refine, and grow the program into a national model. The core adaptation and implementation network partners include: NDSU; the Ohio State University; the Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of North Texas, and the University of Wyoming. This project has the potential to lead to the adoption of the A&A as a national model by ASEE following implementation and adaptation of the program by the network partners. This project will provide evidentiary support of how male advocates and allies can uniquely assist engineering programs in attracting and retaining more women faculty. In so doing, it will help grow a large cadre of faculty leaders trained as advocates and allies to advance the number of women (at all levels) in STEM.This project will shed new light on the role, function, and utility of developing and implementing gendered-faculty advocate and ally groups in higher education as a means to advance efforts to support women faculty in STEM, particularly in engineering. Research on male faculty advocates and allies is virtually nonexistent. Most of the work in the area of ally groups in higher education has focused on male students or gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered support groups. The project goals include: (1) acquire new knowledge on the development and implementation of faculty advocate and ally groups in higher education as a means to improve climate for all faculty and women faculty in engineering in particular; (2) demonstrate the efficacy of advocates and allies in promoting gender equality and equity; and (3) become a fully established, self-sustaining locus of research, training, and support in proactively engaging men in gender equity efforts in schools of engineering across the country. The partner institutions offer a unique mix of characteristics: public/private, ADVANCE/non-ADVANCE, PhD/non-PhD granting, small/large, wide regional representation, and broad ethnic and gender diversity. These varied characteristics are essential to identifying and developing broadly applicable implementation models and training. This project focuses on engineering disciplines where there are a declining number of women studying and earning advanced degrees and more Ph.D. trained women are opting not to seek jobs in academia. The NSF ADVANCE Partnerships for Learning and Adaptation Networks (PLAN) program track supports projects that promote the adaptation and implementation of previously effective ADVANCE programs in new contexts and the testing of innovative strategies to promote the participation, success, and advancement of women in STEM academic careers. PLAN projects also contribute to the knowledge base on gender equity in STEM academic careers.