BPE-Track 2: Collaborative: Supporting Engineering Faculty Gender Equity by Understanding the Experiences and Career Trajectories of Women in Non-tenure Track Faculty Roles

The broader impact of this Broadening Participation for Engineering Track 2 (BPE- Track-2) project will be to enhance knowledge about how to increase the number of women in higher-power (tenure-track) engineering faculty and leadership positions. Though many stakeholders prioritize increasing gender equity for academic faculty, statistics show that women are over-represented in lower-power faculty positions (non-tenure track). These lower-power faculty roles are often not eligible for higher career advancement, including campus leadership positions. Without gender equity in higher positions of power, the benefits of a diverse workforce cannot be fully realized. We are researching why and how women are positioned in lower- or higher-powered faculty roles in academia. To do this, we will learn from people along this career path, including women graduate engineering students, women in lower-power engineering faculty positions, and women engineering faculty in higher-power positions. By interviewing these people and studying their experiences, we will be able to more deeply understand the underlying mechanisms that result in these power imbalances for women, including women of color. This understanding will then inform changes that institutions can make to support women faculty advancing toward leadership positions in academia. The proposed project leverages a qualitative approach to answer the unexplored research question: How can institutions support the advancement of women faculty in non-tenure track (NTT) ranks? Our study will explore women graduate student and faculty experiences through the lenses of intra-occupational gender segregation and social cognitive career theory to identify key mechanisms that influence women’s career decisions in academia and the factors that support women’s transitions from NTT to tenure-track (TT) roles. The project will leverage our prior research to determine: 1) how trainee perceptions of TT and NTT roles develop and influence career decisions; 2) how NTT women faculty experience their roles and seek career advancement; and 3) what are the pathways, including barriers and supports, of advancement of women from NTT to TT ranks. We will interview 40-50 participants, including (1) women engineering graduate students, (2) women NTT faculty in engineering, and (3) women TT faculty in engineering. Interview collection will include semi-structured, quantitative comparative, and critical incident techniques and analysis will include thematic analysis and corresponding quantitative comparative, and critical incident analysis. We will leverage our results to inform research-based practices to support career development and institutional policies that support gender equity. This project was partially supported by the NSF ADVANCE program which is designed to foster STEM faculty equity by identifying and eliminating organizational barriers to the full participation and advancement of diverse faculty in academic institutions. 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.