Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Using Mentoring as a Catalyst for Change Abstract

How do you engage female faculty that are overworked, underpaid, and feeling isolated within their department? Such are the challenges faced by the ADVANCE grant at this four-year institution. With a five-year Institutional Transformation award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the ADVANCE project is attempting to change the culture of the campus in order to increase the number of women faculty in STEM and to help further the careers of those already on campus. Mentoring Circles have been created to allow networking among a small group of women and reduce the burden on any individual of implementing such a program.

Introduction

Mentoring programs have been implemented to improve the retention and increase the success of faculty at many universities, especially for women in the male-dominated fields of science and engineering.1, 2, 3, 4 A number of different models have been used for the mentoring programs including the traditional dyadic relationship of a mentor and protégé, referred to as the grooming mentoring model, a less-structured, non-hierarchical networking mentoring model, or a combination of some of the elements in both of these models.5, 6, 7 Some mentoring programs are based on a network of peers that is either formally constructed8, 9 or that creates itself10. The benefits to participants in a mentoring program can be career-enhancing and/or psychosocial.4

Background

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona)is primarily an undergraduate institution with masters degrees offered in some programs. Faculty carry a heavy teaching load with engineering faculty often teaching two lectures and three labs every quarter. In addition, they are expected to give service to the university and to be involved in scholarship or other professional activities. As a result of all of these demands on faculty time, it is difficult to get faculty to participate in extra programs, such as mentoring.

In the fall of 2006, Cal Poly Pomona was awarded an NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant to increase the representation and advancement of women faculty in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Activities at this institution are organized around four key areas: 1) Institutional Development/Sustainability, 2) Recruitment, 3) Career Development, and 4) Leadership Development.

Women make up 25% of the tenure/tenure-track faculty in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines at Cal Poly Pomona, with some departments still having none or only one female faculty member. With state budget cuts, a campus hiring freeze and cancelled departmental faculty searches, it seemed unlikely that ADVANCE could positively impact the recruitment component of its proposal. Data from the ADVANCE STEM faculty climate survey demonstrated how more senior male faculty members felt nothing was wrong, senior female faculty hardly responded and junior female faculty members felt overwhelmed and underappreciated. Focus group meetings revealed that many women felt disenfranchised and

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Hacker, B., & Dong, W., & Lucero Ferrel, M. (2009, June), Using Mentoring As A Catalyst For Change Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--5411