The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently gave Michigan State University (MSU) a $3.98 million ADVANCE grant to help the school increase its faculty diversity.
The grant will fund the Participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers program, also known as ADVANCE.
MSU’s ADVANCE project, “Advancing Diversity through Alignment of Policies and Practices (ADAPP),” strives to attract talented engineering faculty to the school, including women.
Women earn nearly half of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees, but constitute only 27 percent of the science and engineering work force at large and only 29 percent (in 2003) of doctoral-level science and engineering faculty in four-year colleges and universities, according to MSU.
The first goal of the ADAPP is to develop engineering, natural science ad social science policies that can be applied all over campus.
MSU has been recognized for successfully increasing its faculty diversity on campus, which was a large reason the school got the new grant.
“MSU already has significant activity on which we will build our ADVANCE project,” says MSU Provost Kim Wilcox, who will serve as the principal investigator of the ADAPP project. “Our project aims to build capacity and reduce bias in recruitment, retention and promotion, by aligning strategic goals in colleges and departments with the university-wide value of diversity, and then implementing objective evaluation criteria.”
Source: Michigan State University
Ivy Hughes, development news editor, can be reached here.
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