The National Science Foundation's ADVANCE Program
The NSF ADVANCE program's stated goals are
to increase the recruitment, retention, and promotion into leadership positions of women in engineering and the sciences, and to institutionalize best practices, policies and programs across colleges as they pertain to women faculty.
The ADVANCE Program at Cornell University
Principal Investigators
The Cornell ADVANCE team: Provost Biddy Martin, German Studies
and Women's Studies (front left), Prof. Marjolein van der
Meulen, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (front middle), Prof. Sheila
Hemami, Electrical and Computer Engineering (front right), Prof. Shelley Correll, Sociology (back left), Vice Provost for Diversity and
Faculty Development Robert Harris, African American History (back right) CU-ADVANCE Center Staff
Tine Reimers, CU-ADVANCE Center Executive Director, (cr229@cornell.edu) Link
Amy Pape, CU-ADVANCE Center Administrative Assistant, (amp73@cornell.edu)
122 Day Hall
Phone: 607-255-6867
Fax: 607-255-4672
Email: advance@cornell.edu
Cornell University is committed to diversity and gender equity and to an institutional environment where all faculty can achieve their greatest potential in research, education, and service. Despite the University's commitment, gender diversity remains a significant problem that affects the quality of our enterprise. Over the five year life of the ADVANCE grant, we aim to achieve 20% women faculty in each S&E department. This level will move the representation of women from token status to a critical mass in each department, the environment that most determines faculty daily life. Our longer-term objective is that a third of our S&E faculty be women by 2015, Cornell's sesquicentennial.
CU-ADVANCE sets forth 4 broad initiatives, on recruiting, faculty development, climate, and evaluation
The Recruitment Initiative includes
- Development and implementation of strategies for successful recruiting of women
- Interview support for women candidates
- S&E-specific centralized dual-career placement support and expedited funding for partners of S&E women candidates
- Two prestigious named lecture series, for use in recruiting early-career women
The Faculty Development Initiative includes
- Establishment of formal mentoring programs for all faculty in S&E.
- Various workshop series, professional development grants, and high-risk research initiation grants for women faculty
The Climate Initiative includes
- Ongoing climate assessment following up on the Work-Life Survey.
- Department chair, search committee, and faculty education on diversity and climate issues
The Evaluation Initiative includes quantitative studies on promotion and retention
- Demographic composition and social relations in departments study.
- Interview/Offer/To-tenure-or-departure tracking for women in S&E and for dual career couples.
Cornell's rich history of educating women in science and engineering