DETROIT ? The National Science Foundation has awarded a $499,858 grant to Wayne State University ? one of seven awarded nationally – to establish a three-year interdisciplinary program to improve career advancement opportunities for women faculty in sciences and engineering.
Escalate, which starts Sept. 1, seeks to diversify the academic science and engineering workforce and builds on and applies lessons learned from a prior NSF-funded project at the University of Michigan.
Escalate hopes to use several strategies to achieve its goals:
Resource Team. Team members will learn about women?s circumstances and institutional culture change strategies and will work to help WSU to improve.
UM Theatre Group Presentations. This experienced theatre company will present interactive workshops teaching campus leaders about equity in faculty hiring, tenure, and mentoring process.
Joint Urban Presence. This will allow WSU faculty to help UM faculty develop known effective strategies in working with urban students.
Departmental Transformation. Two WSU engineering departments, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, will work to increase the numbers of women faculty and help women faculty to advance.
Annual Women?s Career Symposium. Women faculty, upper level graduate students, and post-doctoral students in the sciences and engineering meet and learn practical solutions to everyday career dilemmas, network opportunities, and guidance from the researchers and Resource Team.
Monthly Career Network Meetings. These events, focused on specific issues or disciplines, provide opportunities for UM and WSU women to network.
Web Resource for Career Developments. This Web site will facilitate sharing research interests, accomplishments, career challenges, and opportunities.
Career Development Grants. These small grants to WSU women faculty assist women in overcoming critical career barriers by funding travel to meetings with granting agencies; by covering expenses such as child care incurred at conferences; or by bringing relevant speakers to WSU.
Wider Horizons. ESCALATE invites women faculty and staff from other neighboring colleges and universities in the region to attend the monthly Career Network Meetings and the Annual Women?s Career Symposium, thus widening the strengthening broad-based networks of women in science and engineering.
Principal Investigator project is Allen Batteau, director of the Institute for Information Technology and Culture and associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Co -investigators are Ece Yaprak, associate professor of Engineering Technology; Karen Tonso, associate professor of Education; research associate Diane Pawlowski and Michele Grimm, associate dean of Engineering, who will oversee climate change activities in the two engineering departments and serves as liaison with administration.
