Gender Equity Change
- EDGE Deans Checklist Poster for Advancing Women Faculty (for download)
Dean’s Checklist & Suggested Tools and Resources
*Note: Use the arrow to to expand for resources.
Ο Do you know your personal level of awareness, knowledge, and action in support of gender equity? Is your name among those deans who have signed the ASEE Dean’s Diversity Pledge? A key step in commitment to diversity, is a public commitment to diversity work AND sharing that commitment with those in your college. Participants in the EDGE Action Steps Workshop found the Dean Personal Self-Assessment Questionnaire provided during Dr. Valian’s research overview to be a useful self-assessment tool and recommended that it be made available as a personal benchmark for dean’s engaged in gender equity work. The Dean Personal Self-Assessment Questionnaire can help you gain insight into your own gender equity awareness, knowledge, and actions; as well as provide opportunity for you to participate in EDGE Initiative Research on engineering dean’s and gender equity. Ο Does the college have a diversity plan, and does it specifically include gender? Ο Have you identified a Gender Equity Change Team? Ο Do you have a sense of how “ready” faculty and staff are to engage in gender equity change? In this informative Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) Conference workshop facilitated by Wall & O’bear (2008), a process is proposed for determining college-level, gender equity change “readiness” using the Multi-Cultural Organizational Developmental Stage Model. Actions such as review of policies, practices, demographics, and faculty behaviors are proposed. This college “cultural audit” work is recommended to be done by a diverse team (e.g., the EDGE Change Team), representing key dominant and subordinate groups within the college. In determining the most appropriate place to launch gender equity work, it is important to design change processes and activities that take into consideration the readiness of people in the college to change. Matching an intervention with the developmental stage of the organization helps ensure greater efficiency, effectiveness, and ultimate success of the change process. In another useful resource, Mayeno (2007) discusses how the transtheoretical mode of change can be helpful in designing appropriate developmental stage-matched approaches to change. Useful examples are provided. Ο Have you collected comprehensive college-level, gender equity self-assessment data? Ο Are you familiar with evidence-based strategies to support gender equity efforts? Foundational Transformation Resources: A change leader can get overwhelmed and spend a lot of time working to identify appropriate evidence-based gender equity change strategies. Check the Checklist, Tools, and Resources page for regular updates on vetted annotated gender equity resources. This Toolkit is a phenomenally rich resource that distills evidence, strategies, and lessons learned from change leaders serving institutions that have implemented Institutional Transformation (IT) projects under the National Science Foundation ADVANCE program. Change leaders using this Toolkit can “strategically choose and combine interventions” found to create instructional environments that support the success of women scholars in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Tools for Search Committees Tools for Onboarding New Faculty Tools for Cultivating Leaders Engineering Specific Resources TECAID is an NSF-funded project that not only demonstrated that five teams of faculty, chairs, and staff from Mechanical Engineering departments across the US could gain knowledge, skills, and strategies necessary to change complex academic engineering departments, but also a model and specific resources for how to lead engineering culture change in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Model includes resources found to be especially helpful to the original TECAID teams. Case Studies with strategic pointers, learning modules with accompanying webinars, and additional resources are highly valuable to any engineering gender equity effort.* Example Emerging Promising Practices Resources Service in the academy, both formal and informal (across all academic disciplines in higher education), is labor that can be important, time-intensive, often unrewarded work. Research shows women and underrepresented minorities conduct a disproportionate amount of service. At a Summit Nov. 6-8, 2018 leaders explored the definition and value of faculty service and engagement, strategies to address equity in faculty workloads and rewards, and effective integration of this work into the range of responsibilities for a fully successful and engaged faculty. Information on creating gender equity in service work can be found here. Ο Do you have a plan to manage inevitable diversity in approach, and conflict, when it arises so these challenges won’t undermine gender equity efforts? Resources associated with managing conflict can be found in the TECAID Model document, Case Study: Effectively Navigating Conflict while Engaging in DEI Change Efforts, and video content in Modules 1 and 3. TECAID is an NSF-funded project that not only demonstrated that five teams of faculty, chairs, and staff from Mechanical Engineering departments across the US could gain knowledge, skills, and strategies necessary to change complex academic engineering departments, but also a model and specific resources for how to lead engineering culture change in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Model includes resources found to be especially helpful to the original TECAID teams. Case Studies with strategic pointers, learning modules with accompanying webinars, and additional resources are highly valuable to any engineering gender equity effort. * Ο Do you have a Gender Equity Change Plan, based in analysis of college-level, gender equity self-assessment data collected? Ο Have you engaged marketing and communication staff to share the vision, provide updates, and celebrate successes? Ο Do you have models/examples for implementing strategic activities? TECAID is an NSF-funded project that not only demonstrated that five teams of faculty, chairs, and staff from Mechanical Engineering departments across the US could gain knowledge, skills, and strategies necessary to change complex academic engineering departments, but also a model and specific resources for how to lead engineering culture change in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Model includes resources found to be especially helpful to the original TECAID teams. Case Studies with strategic pointers, learning modules with accompanying webinars, and additional resources are highly valuable to any engineering gender equity effort. Ο Have you identified and adequately resourced a Gender Equity Implementation Team (or teams)? Ο Is process/program sustainability built into your Gender Equity Change Plan? Ο Do you have an evaluation plan (or plans)? Evaluation information can be found in the TECAID content in Module 4: Evaluating Department Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Change: Tips from TECAID’s Evaluators.TECAID is an NSF-funded project that not only demonstrated that five teams of faculty, chairs, and staff from Mechanical Engineering departments across the US could gain knowledge, skills, and strategies necessary to change complex academic engineering departments, but also a model and specific resources for how to lead engineering culture change in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Model includes resources found to be especially helpful to the original TECAID teams. Case Studies with strategic pointers, learning modules with accompanying webinars, and additional resources are highly valuable to any engineering gender equity effort. *Note: These resources were presented at the EDGE Action Steps Workshop (April 10, 2019).