ADVANCE Adaptation: University of Arkansas Empowering Networked Groups for Arkansas Gender Equity (ENGAGE)

The goals of the University of Arkansas’s NSF ADVANCE Adaptation program (ENGAGE) are to diversify STEM faculty and assure all faculty can thrive in our environment. ENGAGE will address the marginalization and isolation of women of color and white women on campus as a source of inequality by re-imagining how service work is valued and allotted. Thus, we seek to shift to a culture of inclusivity and recognition through 1) empowering white women and women of color through the redistribution of service workloads to both support research and make service obligations transparent; 2) connecting isolated white women and women of color to active research teams; and 3) attracting and supporting white women and women of color to campus.

In this way, our equity initiatives seek to restructure gendered and racialized logics as equitable while addressing the experience of isolation by providing mentoring and integration into research teams.

The University of Arkansas is positioned to apply lessons learned from organizations theory and ADVANCE scholarship to change the university. The cultural shift expected from this project will result in valuing the contributions of all faculty and will coincide with a university-wide emphasis on interdisciplinary research, innovation, and collaboration. In addition, the University of Arkansas Adaptation ENGAGE project will compliment a recently launched Institute for Inclusion and Diversity.

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 institution 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.