ADVANCE Adaptation - ASCEND: Adaptations for a Sustainable Climate of Excellence and Diversity

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The NSF ADVANCE program is designed to foster gender equity through a focus on the identification and elimination of organizational barriers that impede the full participation and advancement of diverse faculty in academic institutions. Organizational barriers that inhibit equity may exist in policies, processes, practices, and the organizational culture and climate. ADVANCE "Adaptation" awards provide support for the adaptation and adoption of evidence-based strategies to academic and non-academic non-profit organizations.University of Tennessee Knoxville (UT) Adaptation project will adapt proven initiatives from ADVANCE programs at other institutions to transform the campus climate at UT and reduce disparities in the recruitment, hiring, retention, and advancement of women faculty in STEM disciplines. The project is called the Adaptions for a Sustainable Climate of Excellence and Diversity (ASCEND). The ASCEND initiatives target three specific institutional issues identified by UT: (1) a culture of implicit bias (UT-CLIMBS), (2) experience of social and professional isolation (UT-CONNECTS), and (3) lack of support for work-life integration (UTWINS). The project is not designed to facilitate the assimilation of women into problematic work cultures, but rather to identify and change problematic aspects of campus work cultures. ASCEND UT-CLIMBS activities will work to increase awareness of implicit bias in STEM and its implications on institutional policies and informal practices, reduce implicit bias and institutional discrimination, and facilitate ongoing dialogue and departmental equity allies. UT-CONNECTS activities will increase the number of female STEM faculty recruited to and retained at UT, improve the sense of belonging among STEM women faculty, increase the number of interdisciplinary collaborations, and satisfaction and productivity. UT-WINS activities will increase satisfaction with parental leave policies, more equitable service load distributions and recognition of "invisible" service, and transform attitudes toward these policies and their use. The UT ADVANCE Adaptation project will leverage the institution's Intersectionality Community of Scholars which is an interdisciplinary group of faculty with interest and expertise in intersectional research, theory, and action. ASCEND will bring to the UT campus a consciousness of the intersectional nature of implicit bias that has formal and informal implications at all levels and occurs beyond just the hiring phase. It will disseminate this awareness broadly via the IDIAS Research Digest and online database.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.