WEB NEWS RELEASE
Maryland receives $3.2M NSF-ADVANCE Grant; College of Education Faculty
Member KerryAnn O'Meara, Co-PI
COLLEGE PARK, MD (October 2010) - While UM has made significant progress in hiring women into tenure-track positions, retention, particularly among women in STEM fields, is still a problem. There is a drop in retention rates of women faculty at two critical points in their academic careers: the first being the tenure decision year, promoting from assistant to associate professor, and again with the decision to promote from associate to full professor. Often times, women faculty members leave the University at these critical junctures to pursue other careers options both inside and outside of academia.
The University of Maryland, with a grant from the National Science Foundation ADVANCE, is seeking to bridge this retention gap by transforming current academic environments to be better supportive of its STEM women faculty.
Research from Associate Professor in Higher Education and co-principal investigator KerryAnn O'Meara, Ph.D. and her colleagues suggests that STEM women faculty are more likely to be retained when their academic environments (at the department, college and institutional levels) support their professional growth, value their contributions and invest in their success. This research provided the conceptual framework for the NSF-ADVANCE grant.
O'Meara asserts, "Academic environments that act as generative, genuine incubators for professional growth are also places that retain faculty and see them more satisfied, committed to their institutions and performing at the highest levels. This is what we hope to achieve at Maryland."
Through active participation of all UM leaders and faculty, the grant will work to change the cultures, structures, policies and practices of the academic environments to be more inclusive in their support of excellence. Key project activities include having senior women mentor junior women in colleges and departments, a Senior STEM womens council, peer to peer learning communities, interdisciplinary seed grants, womens leadership training, a dashboard project, and balance of work and family initiatives.
The grant, "Investing in a Culture of Institutional Excellence (ICIE)," is a collaboration with faculty from the College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences (CMNS) and the A. James Clark School of Engineering. Lead principal investigator of the ICIE grant is Nariman Farvardin, Ph.D., Provost, Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Co-principal investigators with Dr. O'Meara are Darryll J. Pines, Ph.D., Professor and Dean of the Clark School and Avis Cohen, Ph.D., Professor of Biology from the CMNS.
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For more information on the College of Education, visit: www.education.umd.edu
or contact
Halima Cherif, Assistant Director for Communications, at: hcherif@umd.edu
