Work in Progress: The Challenges of Evaluating ADVANCE Initiative’s Effectiveness in the Progress of Women Faculty in Engineering

The retention and promotion of a diverse engineering faculty body play a primary role in the advancement of the field. Failure to retain engineering faculty has significant economic implications for institutions. Additionally, the availability of role models and potential mentors for women and other minorities is paramount for the continuing diversification of the field. Prior research has documented additional challenges faced by women faculty in engineering when compared to men; such evidence has resulted in significant attempts to attenuate such disparities among faculty at all ranks. Initiatives such as those requested by the NSF Organizational Change for Gender Equity in STEM Academic Professions (ADVANCE) have the substantive goal to increase the number of women in engineering and other STEM areas and improve the quality of their experiences through the support of systemic change. However, few is known about how the cumulative positive change enacted by such initiatives manifest in the diversification of the field. Focused on the larger goal of creating models to capture the effectiveness of ADVANCE initiatives, this work in progress presents a literature review of the different factors that have been documented to negatively affect the progress of women faculty in engineering and other STEM areas. This is presented with an iterative identification of elements through different stages of the academic career, layered with variables that are measurable, and potential approaches for future modeling given existing research and the characteristics of the ADVANCE program. The challenges of modeling such a complex system are discussed, together with potential alternatives as a first modeling approach using existing data from different sources. Introduction For the advancement of the engineering discipline in the U.S., it is paramount to ensure fair participation of all members of its diverse society [1]; promoting women representation at the faculty level contributes to this vision. Despite some gains in recent decades, women faculty in engineering are still underrepresented. Between 2006 and 2016, the proportion of women faculty in engineering grew from 16% to 23% at the assistant level, from 11.9% to 18.3% at the associate level, and from 3.8% to 10.6% at the full professor level [2], [3]. While the proportion of women faculty at the lower ranks has increased significantly, the limited representation of women at higher faculty ranks limits their potential for reaching leadership roles and contribution with significant decision-making to influence engineering education [4]. Although the presented gains are of value, and may already reflect the effect of multiple initiatives implemented to support the hiring and retention of women faculty in STEM areas [5], engineering is still far from gender parity at all academic levels. To promote a more diverse engineering education field, institutions need to accelerate the gains in the representation of women at all levels. Extensive evidence exists about the additional challenges faced by women faculty in STEM areas and supports the need to study their advancement through the academic ranks [6]. Such challenges include but are not limited to: having higher teaching and service loads [7], lack of clarity of the tenure and promotion process [8], lack of mentoring [9], isolation from informal networks [10], and issues of work-life balance [11], [12]. Institutions have used the existing qualitative evidence to inform strategies to support women faculty to overcome such challenges [13]. However, quantitative evidence evaluating how the engineering field is doing at retaining women faculty when compared to men is limited, as well as efforts to understanding the gains across organizations. A cross-organizational quantitative approach would be relevant for such exploration because it would strengthen the evidence for the value that initiatives such as ADVANCE bring to the gains in the field. Nevertheless, evaluation approaches need to be well informed by a systemic understanding of the different factors involved in the problem of interest, and the complexity of faculty paths and priorities at the level of individual organizations. The purpose of this paper is to inform a systems-wide characterization of the issue of gender equity in engineering and other STEM academia based on existing research, identify measurable factors that can be used for assessment purposes and recognize the challenges for quantitative modeling the effectiveness of initiatives for diversifying STEM, in particular that of NSFADVANCE programs. In this narrative literature review, we first present the factors affecting the success of women faculty in engineering and other STEM areas that have been documented in the literature, resulting in a general three-stage approach that splits hiring, early career and late career professionals’ experiences and challenges through organizational policies and support systems and Individual factors & Experiences. Then we include the evidence from existing quantitative work assessing gender differences in faculty advancement. A layer of complexity is added based on the most updated research on ADVANCE initiatives. We conclude with a discussion about the modeling challenges for program cross-organizational assessment and the future work in which we will engage towards that goal. Factors affecting the success of women faculty in engineering and other STEM areas Barriers to entry. An increasing challenge for institutions of higher education to attract and retain talented faculty is the “two-body problem,” which refers to dual-career couples in which both members are highly qualified and specialized, restricting the types of jobs and locations they prefer [14]. As women are more likely to be married to professionals, their job prospects become limited, making women in dual-career couples less likely to seek tenure-track positions. Institutions have established dual-career policies to tackle this issue. However, it has been documented that such accommodations are concentrated among research universities, and doctoral-granting universities, comprehensive institutions, and liberal arts colleges were less likely to have related policies in place [15]. In addition, such policies sometimes come with the concern of stigmatization of the second hire, most often women, who are assumed underqualified or treated with less respect and support [16], despite research showing evidence that members of academic couples are as productive or more productive than non-couple hire colleagues [14] in their corresponding positions. The teaching, research, and service balance. Once in the tenure track, the difference in time allocation between men and women faculty is extensively documented in science and engineering areas [7], [17]–[21]. A quantitative study on the gendered division of labor among STEM faculty found that the percentage of time spent in undergraduate instruction affects the average of yearly publications negatively, while time spent in graduate instruction and research affects positively the number of yearly publications. Since women in the study reported allocating more time to undergraduate teaching, their research is the most affected [7]. To address this issue, institutions hiring faculty in tenure-track positions have been suggested to build structures where the time of the assistant professor can be protected to devote more time to research (Trower, 2012). However, such disparities in time allocation have been found to be persistent even after reaching tenure. A study of senior faculty found that women spent more time in service, teaching-related activities, and student advising, while men spent more time in research [21]. The evidence on the limitations derived from the imbalance in teaching, research, and service for women faculty might indicate that this is one of the elements influencing their departure from institutions. Socialization challenges. Another significant aspect of the experience of faculty in the tenure track is the quality of their social interactions. Research shows that elements of the “chilly climate” [23] that women face through their undergraduate and graduate experiences persists across academic careers [10]. Such elements include a low sense of belonging as well as isolation from social networks that incentivize stimulating intellectual interactions. A study on the socialization of STEM faculty found that among faculty of both genders it was less likely they would engage in discussions about research with women faculty, and when such discussions took place, women would be rated as less competent [24]. In her work, [25] found that the low numbers of women faculty in STEM resulted in feelings of isolation, the lack of role models, and the need to work harder than male scholars to gain credibility and respect. Women faculty in engineering have also described the disadvantages of having a prevailing male administration with climate surveys identifying that they still perceived some male faculty and administrators as treating women as second-class faculty, believing that women should care for their families, judging women by elements not related to professional performance (e.g., appearance), and showing less respect to women faculty in public interactions [26]. Additional evidence shows women faculty as less likely to report being treated respectfully and more likely to report feelings of exclusion from informal networks and decision-making structures [27]. Such perceptions influence the intentions of women faculty to leave an institution significantly [28]. Mentoring. To ameliorate the disadvantage of limited socialization, institutions have adopted mentoring models to support the advancement of faculty on the tenure track and beyond [29]– [31]. While these strategies have helped all faculty, they have had a significantly positive effect on women in male-dom