ADVANCE Catalyst: Improving Gender and Foreign-Born Equity among STEM Faculty at the University of North Dakota

University of North Dakota will implement an ADVANCE Catalyst project to conduct an institutional self-assessment of existing inequalities among its STEM faculty, particularly as experienced by women, racial and ethnic minorities, and foreign-born individuals. These demographic groups constitute over half of the STEM faculty at UND. Existing differences in salary and tenure and other employment conditions hinder individual, and consequently institutional, advancement.

To better understand the complex and important sociocultural processes and policy structures that generate these relative and objective disadvantages among its STEM faculty, UND will use an intersectionality perspective that analyzes how individuals who self-identify with multiple social statuses simultaneously interact within an organization that systematically rank orders social groups, from promotion and tenure to laboratory space. UND will use the information from the institutional self-assessment to design a five-year strategic plan that promotes sustainable equity in its STEM disciplines and may serve as a reference point for non-STEM disciplines.

The two-year project aims to identify the types of, extent of, and reasons for, inequality through a range of methodological techniques, including university analytics, policy analysis, faculty surveys, focus groups, and individual in-depth interviews. The different strategies are advantageous with respect to identifying objective individual differences, organizational arrangements, and intergroup perceptions, all of which aim to shed light on the context of inequality and the mediating sociocultural processes that link micro social identities with systemic advantage or disadvantage.

With these results, the broader scope of the project, which is to communicate sustainable strategies for equity in STEM disciplines, may contribute to the advancement of current and future STEM scholars. An additional implication centers on advancing theoretical understanding of dynamic social identities in the workplace, knowledge which may empower diverse individuals and improve research and labor market innovations.

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 "Catalyst" awards provide support for institutional equity assessments and the development of five-year faculty equity strategic plans at an academic, non-profit institution of higher education.

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.