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ACCEL: Advancing Cornell's Commitment
to Excellence and Leadership

Our Objectives

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

The Faculty Development Initiative includes:
  • Establishment of formal mentoring programs for all faculty in S&E
  • Various workshop series, professional development grants, and 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.

    • 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 women candidates
  • Two prestigious named lecture series, for use in recruiting early-career women

    • CU-ADVANCE Center Staff

    Yael Levitte, Executive Director
    (yl343@cornell.edu)

    Amy Pape Neish, Administrative Assistant
    (amp73@cornell.edu)

    CU-ADVANCE Center
    122 Day Hall
    Ithaca, NY 14853
    Phone: 607-255-6867
    Fax: 607-255-4672
    advance@cornell.edu

    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.

    Provost W. Kent Fuchs Joins CU-ADVANCE as Principal Investigator

    Kent
    Provost Kent Fuchs

    CU-ADVANCE Co-PIs

    team

    From left to right:
    Sheila Hemami, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Kim Weeden, Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology

    Melissa Thomas-Hunt, Associate Professor, Johnson Graduate School of Management

    Marjolein van der Meulen, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering