AGEP FC-PAM: The University of Texas System Alliance: An Inclusive Model of Mentoring, Sponsorship, and Systemic Change for Diversity in STEM Faculty Career Paths

The AGEP Faculty Career Pathways Alliance Model (FC-PAM) “The University of Texas System Alliance” (UT System Alliance) promotes equity and inclusion in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) higher education. The goal of the AGEP UT System Alliance is to develop, implement, self-study, and institutionalize a University of Texas System AGEP career pathway model that provides (1) systemic change around policies and procedures for recruitment and hiring of, and (2) collaborative mentoring and sponsorship for the success of Black and African American, Latine and Hispanic American, Native American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and Native Pacific Islander STEM doctoral candidates, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty members at the University of Texas campuses at Arlington, Austin, Dallas, El Paso, and San Antonio.

The AGEP UT System Alliance provides inclusive mentoring and sponsorship for AGEP UT System Alliance participants around tools for success, and it promotes changes in culture and policy at each Alliance institution to create an ecosystem supportive of the professional development. Alliance activities are addressing non-inclusive practices and creating welcoming spaces for members of these groups as they ascend to careers in academia.

The Alliance is working to improve the understanding of intersecting identities around ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, economic background, first generation status, faculty role and discipline, and family and community roles, as intersectional identities inform professional development activities for doctoral candidates, postdoctoral research scholars, and early career faculty members, as well as professional development for university leaders as part of systemic change strategies. The AGEP UT System Alliance is also adopting faculty hiring best practices for early career faculty hiring policies and practices.

Improving equity and inclusion is critical to advancing STEM faculty members, educating America’s future STEM workforce, fostering individual opportunity, and contributing to a thriving U.S. economy. The NSF AGEP program, therefore, funds grants that advance and enhance the systemic factors that support equity and inclusion and, consequently, mitigate the systemic inequities in the academic profession and workplace.

FC-PAM awards are intended to support the development, implementation, evaluation, and institutionalization of Alliance models that will advance AGEP populations, within similar institutions of higher education. FC-PAM collaborators also study how socio-cultural, economic, structural, leadership and institutional variables affect the formation of the FC-PAM, and the strategies or interventions the collaborators implement to advance AGEP populations.

The Alliance has internal and external advisory boards with members who routinely review the AGEP UT System Alliance’s progress and strategize on future steps. An internal evaluator is leading the project’s self-study and formative assessment of the development and implementation of effective programming, institutional integration, and impacts. An external evaluator is providing summative assessment using a theory-based framework to assess the effectiveness of the AGEP UT System Alliance in recruiting, supporting, and retaining STEM doctoral candidates, postdoctoral scholars, and junior faculty members; the Alliance’s creation of career and academic pathways; and the project’s impact on institutional integration for sustainability.

The AGEP UT System Alliance team is disseminating the AGEP FC-PAM Model and project results through peer-reviewed and professional publications, an AGEP UT System Alliance website, and presentations at scientific and professional meetings.

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.