{"id":17206,"date":"2017-05-03T15:30:15","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T19:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=17206"},"modified":"2017-05-03T15:30:15","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T19:30:15","slug":"women-diversity-in-stem-focus-of-3-4-million-grant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/women-diversity-in-stem-focus-of-3-4-million-grant\/","title":{"rendered":"Women, diversity in STEM focus of $3.4 million grant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like many universities, Clemson struggles with attracting and retaining women and underrepresented minorities as faculty. That problem is magnified in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. Across the campus, 35 percent of full-time faculty are women. In STEM departments, the percentage drops to 19. When racial diversity is factored in, the statistics are even grimmer. Only one of the 509 STEM faculty members is an African-American woman; two are Hispanic women.
\n\"\"<\/a>In an effort to improve those numbers, Clemson has launched an initiative funded by a $3.4 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to create an inclusive academic culture so women and underrepresented minorities are encouraged to enter and remain in academia. While the national initiative is called ADVANCE: Increasing Participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers, Clemson\u2019s program is nicknamed Tigers ADVANCE, and it has a greater goal: to build a culture that encourages diversity, inclusiveness and acceptance.
\n\u201cThe impact these STEM fields have on our society is immeasurable,\u201d said Robert\u00a0Jones, Clemson\u2019s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and co-principal investigator of the grant. \u201cWe need diverse ideas and perspectives in the academy and in our workforce to tackle the greatest challenges we, and future generations, will face.\u201d
\nThe grant application process, spearheaded by civil engineering professor Sez Atamturktur, took more than two years and countless hours from more than 40 faculty, staff and students. The group identified five major challenges to women in STEM faculty positions at Clemson and established these corresponding goals:
\n\u2022 Transform the culture and improve the campus climate to reduce bias and implicit bias against women and minority faculty.
\n\u2022 Increase the representation of women in STEM fields.
\n\u2022 Ensure equitable workload distributions so appointments to committees, special projects and other non-academic activities are assigned equally across the faculty.
\n\u2022 Enhance faculty mentoring and leadership development to support all faculty and increase retention.
\n\u2022 Implement family-friendly policies to help improve recruitment and retention of world-class faculty.
\nWith Tigers ADVANCE, Clemson will increase the number of women being considered for faculty positions and put measures in place to retain female members. \u201cWe will strive to match the representation of women in faculty positions to the number of candidates available for those positions in the national pool,\u201d Atamturktur said.
\nOf the 14,499 faculty applicants to Clemson between 2010 and 2014, 23 percent were women, 10.7 percent were minority women and 0.7 percent were African-American women. Of all eligible doctoral degree graduates in the country, 53 percent were women, 15 percent were minority women and 7 percent were African-American women.
\n\u201cOur search committees absolutely are\u00a0doing a good job of identifying talented women and bringing them to campus,\u201d Atamturktur said. \u201cThe problem is the number of women in our applicant pools is very, very low. We\u2019re starting with fewer options.\u201d
\nLikewise, although women receive tenure and promotions at rates equal to men, women leave Clemson at rates higher than men. Between 2011 and 2014, 56 percent of assistant professors (pre-tenure faculty) who left were women. Among STEM faculty, 28 percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty members who left were women, although women made up only 19 percent of the faculty.
\nWhile the NSF grant specifically supports women in STEM fields, Clemson will make its own investment to extend Tigers ADVANCE to non-STEM departments. \u201cWe believe this is the only way to achieve institution-wide impact and sustainable transformation,\u201d Atamturktur said. \u201cFive years from now our campus should be a lot more diverse with a more inclusive culture and more openness to new ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like many universities, Clemson struggles with attracting and retaining women and underrepresented minorities as faculty. That problem is magnified in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. Across the campus, 35 percent of full-time faculty are women. In STEM departments, the percentage drops to 19. When racial diversity is factored in, the statistics are even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":17208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[881,885,994,996,2391,3016,3399],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-17206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-these-hills","tag-cw-spring-2017","tag-cw-spring-2017-in-these-hills","tag-diversity","tag-diversity-in-stem","tag-research-news","tag-tigers-advance","tag-women-in-stem"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/04\/WOMENinSTEM-STATS.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17206"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}