Sharon Bird, Co-PI of ISU ADVANCE Presented Findings at President's Luncheon

Sharon Bird, Associate Professor of Sociology and Co-PI of the ISU ADVANCE program presented findings from her research on enhancing faculty work climate on March 1st at President Geoffroy and Executive Vice President and Provost Hoffman’s luncheon for ISU department Chairs. The presentation, “How to be an Agent of Change within your Department,” provided an overview of findings from research based on interview and focus group data with 226 faculty members from 9 “focal departments” on the ISU campus.

The Iowa State University ADVANCE Collaborative Transformation (CT) project is one of many components of ISU’s ADVANCE program. ISU ADVANCE is funded by a 5 year “Institutional Transformation” grant from the National Science Foundation. The National Science Foundation awards 5-year ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grants to universities and colleges for the purpose of  transforming  institutional structures, cultures, and practices in ways that enhance the recruitment, retention, and promotion of women faculty, and when possible, underrepresented faculty of color, in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. ISU’s ADVANCE program goals include “top-down” initiatives, such as the creation of college-level “Equity Advisors” (in 3 colleges presently) and the development, implementation and support of university-wide policies for enhancing faculty members’ work-life balance. ISU ADVANCE goals also include “bottom-up” initiatives, such as the Collaborative Transformation project.

The CT project focuses explicitly on working with faculty members to learn about and then transform departmental structures, cultures and practices in ways that enhance faculty members’ satisfaction with their careers at ISU; their productivity as scholars; and their contributions to departmental efforts to recruit, retain and promote other excellent and diverse faculty members. Findings based on the ADVANCE CT research show that ISU STEM faculty understand clearly and embrace enthusiastically ISU’s mission as a research-intensive university. Faculty report, in addition, that improvements could be made at the department level to enhance faculty members’ and departments’ overall academic contributions. Seven primary areas pertaining to faculty members’ work in their respective departments were identified as most apt to contribute to their scholarly productivity and fulfillment as academics: 1) collegiality and the work environment; 2) faculty recruitment and hiring structures; 3) promotion and tenure practices; 4) mentoring; 5) work-life balance; 6) faculty teaching loads and course distribution practices; and 7) facilities and administrative support.