ADVANCE Adaptation: Advancing and Maintaining Equity in STEM (AMES)

The Advancing and Maintaining Equity in STEM (AMES) ADVANCE Adaptation project at Bradley University (BU) will implement interventions to improve campus climate and develop policies and procedures that can be used across Bradley University and in other predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs) to recruit and retain science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty from all backgrounds. To address campus climate, the AMES project will implement two initiatives; 1) an Advocates & Allies program (developed by North Dakota State University) to address implicit bias, improve understanding of systemic and interpersonal forms of discrimination, and build advocacy and intervention skills among faculty, and 2) a Diversity, Equity, and Solidarity (IDEAS) Program to increase awareness of and appreciation for broadening participation and fairness in STEM through regular and highly visible campus events and communications. The AMES project is designed to shift the BU campus climate toward a culture of fairness, mutual respect, and non-discrimination. The project also seeks to address the systemic barriers that contribute to the lack of participation in academic careers and hinder success for all STEM faculty. To address systemic structural issues, the project aims to 1) engage faculty in the revision of annual review processes and tenure, promotion, and retention policies, 2) create and implement a dashboard to better track faculty data along multiple dimensions and build accountability for institutional change, and 3) develop and pilot ADVANCE-informed Chair Training (ACT) to provide STEM chairs with training in areas that impact hiring, workload, retention, and promotion. The AMES project outcomes including tools, and curricular materials will be disseminated to regional and national audiences through publications, conference presentations, and its publicly accessible website. 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, non-profit institutions of higher education as well as non-academic, non-profit organizations. 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.