ADVANCE Catalyst: Discovery Enabling Systemic Advancement and Faculty Inclusion Across Ranks (DESAFIAR)

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California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) will implement an NSF ADVANCE Catalyst project called DESAFIAR (Discovery Enabling Systemic Advancement and Faculty Inclusion Across Ranks). CSUCI is well positioned for a Catalyst grant, due to a strong campus emphasis on increasing inclusivity, recent changes in critical administrative positions, and an expected 60% growth in campus size. The latter will lead to adding STEM faculty in numbers that allow a dramatic change in the STEM faculty composition. The Catalyst work will enable significant learning about important systemic factors to ensure equitable experiences for current and newly hired faculty. The project will focus on four goals: 1) Implement robust data tracking around each stage of faculty recruitment and hiring practices; 2) Explore perceptions and realities of equity and transparency in faculty teaching and service loads; 3) Review policies and practices; 4) Collaboratively develop a 5-year plan to enhance faculty diversity in STEM. The five-year STEM faculty equity plan will incorporate lessons learned from data collection and policy review, a thorough literature review of ADVANCE and faculty-equity related works, and from consulting with CSUCI leadership and others in the ADVANCE network through site visits to ADVANCE awardees and participation in the ARC Network’s conferences and webinars. By adapting discovery efforts modeled by different types of institutions to our context of a midsize regional public institution where over half of the enrolled students are from groups historically underrepresented in STEM or are lower-income and first-generation students, we will increase understanding of how particular equity initiatives generalize across institutions and institutional types. Lessons learned will be shared to promote analogous changes at other institutions, thus contributing to the development of a diverse STEM workforce in academia and in general.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 "Catalyst" awards provide support for institutional equity assessments and the development of five-year faculty equity strategic plans at an academic, non-profit institution of higher education.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.