ADVANCE Partnership: Faculty Online Learning Communities for Gender Equity, Targeting Department Level Change in STEM

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The Faculty Online Learning Communities for Gender Equity: Targeting Departmental Level Change in STEM (FOLC-E) project offers a unique and valuable opportunity to understand department level structures and culture related to STEM faculty gender inequity. This project addresses the critical need to improve the cultures, practices, and structures of STEM departments by investigating features of the departmental setting. This project will engage teams of faculty representing 5-7 departments per FOLC-E group. As a direct result of this project, twenty-five to forty-five departments, across multiple STEM disciplines, will make a significant department level change addressing inequity, potentially impacting thousands of students and faculty. The potential of this project to promote increased equity within STEM departments will substantially improve the educational places where many of the students that identify as being from groups that are underrepresented in STEM study and work. Partners include the Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) a national alliance of over 4,000 STEM faculty from over 150 institutions of higher education to disseminate information from the grant and PULSE (Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education) which was initially funded by NSF, HHMI and NIGMS/NIH and is now an educational non-profit organization. The project will inform intersectional gender equity reform efforts in STEM by implementing and studying five FOLC-Es. FOLC-E is a mechanism for increasing intersectional gender equity that leverages social learning and support. It is grounded in the concepts of faculty learning communities (FLC), communities of practice (CoP), and departmental action teams (DATs). In a community of practice, people with a common interest come together to fulfill both individual and group goals in a spirit of learning, knowledge generation and sharing, and collaboration. Teams of faculty will work with FOLC-E facilitators, intersectional gender equity experts, and administrative mentors to engage in a process of deeply understanding the power dynamics of inequity. They will engage structures that contribute to inequity that can be leveraged to enact reforms within their departments. Teams will create an action plan for change, utilizing established theories of organizational change, and enact their plans with the support and encouragement of the FOLC-E. The FOLC-E groups will use data to assess the impact and success of their efforts and refine future plans for action. A study of the FOLC-E intervention will result in new knowledge about the organizational and cultural factors that create both barriers to and opportunities for systemic change.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 for projects that scale-up evidence based systemic change strategies to enhance gender equity for STEM faculty regionally or nationally.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.