University of Maryland First Program

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A lack of diversity in STEM continues to be a persistent problem, limiting our capacity to address pressing problems facing individuals, institutions, communities, and our society as a whole. Although many initiatives exist on our campuses to promote diversity and include underrepresented populations at the student level, diversity in the STEM professoriate remains low. For lasting change to occur and to truly include URM faculty in our institutions of higher learning, we need to identify approaches that can be implemented by universities to transform hiring, faculty engagement, and tenure and promotion processes. Modeled on the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, the UM FIRST initiative will work toward effecting institutional, departmental, and faculty-level changes to foster inclusive excellence at both the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). The goals of the Evaluation Core team are to work collaboratively across UMSOM and UMBC, as well as with the NIH FIRST Coordination and Evaluation Center (CEC) to assess, monitor, and track program activities. Using a mixed methods approach, the Evaluation Core will assess the impact of the UM FIRST Initiative in addition to providing ongoing feedback throughout the project to inform modifications in the UM FIRST activities. The evaluation will examine several primary and intermediate outcomes of UM FIRST. The primary outcomes of interest include: examining the change in percent of new faculty hires representing URM groups at the institution and department level; examining the change in percent of URM faculty retained at the institution and department level, and; examining the impact of the UM FIRST initiative on academic productivity of UM FIRST cluster hires. The intermediate outcomes of interest include: an increase in URM representation among new faculty applicant pools at the institution and department level; the successful hiring of UM FIRST faculty cluster hires across UMBC and UMSOM; documented change in written institution hiring policies; documented change in written APT policies; a significant increase in institution DEI culture and climate; an increase in institutional commitment to DEI among leadership, STEM faculty and their departments, and among UM FIRST faculty cluster hires and their mentors, and; the successful implementation of UM FIRST Faculty Development Core activities.