ADVANCE Partnership: Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges Partnering and Liaising Across the Nation

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SUNY Geneseo will lead an NSF ADVANCE Partnership project called the COPLAC Partnering and Liaising Across the Nation (PLAN) Initiative to provide transformational institutional change strategies for COPLAC institutions. The COPLAC (Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges) consortium includes twenty-nine, state-funded, predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs) across the nation. All members of COPLAC share a mission to provide a high-quality, affordable education to their constituents. The project will undertake two main efforts: 1) training and empowering influencers such as administrators and chairs to problem solve and create equity goals, and 2) creating facilitated virtual professional affinity groups among COPLAC faculty. The training will be integrated in the COPLAC annual meeting to support the participation of institutional leadership. The affinity groups will be tailored to support the unique needs of faculty at PUIs and create a conduit for sharing faculty equity issues with COPLAC leaders.The project will ensure that efforts include attention to intersectional issues in STEM academic workplaces which will contribute to the effectiveness of the ADVANCE strategies that are being adapted. The project includes a strong plan for sharing and disseminating information on the project which will be broadly applicable to many other PUIs. In addition, COPLAC institutions that are part of state systems of higher education offer an additional avenue for sharing strategies developed with this project with the state-wide systems. This project has the potential to reduce inequities within the COPLAC consortium institutions and may result in a useful model for other PUIs facing similar challenges across the nation. 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 "Partnership" awards provide support to collaborations among STEM professional societies and academic and non-academic non-profit organizations designed to broaden the implementation of evidence-based equity strategies and have a national or regional reach.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.