Today’s ADVANCE post celebrates the positive influence that faculty can have on the success of students. Specifically, we note how women and under-represented faculty in STEM serve as role models, whether through their presence in classrooms and labs or in professional associations such as WIA or AISES’s Lighting the Pathway program. In this American Psychological Association Science Brief on her research into women’s experiences in STEM fields, Dr. Isis Settles (U of Michigan) describes studies that document the structural and interpersonal challenges that discourage women from remaining in STEM fields. However, she also found evidence for a protective factor associated with resilience and concludes, “Strong gender identification may help women in STEM to function well (both psychologically and in terms of their academic/work performance).”
The website STEMinist offers an inspiring example of such an identity by providing dozens of short biographies of young women who have navigated college and secured fulfilling careers in STEM. It is heartening that these young women seem to hold a woman-in-STEM identity as central to their STEM careers and we applaud STEM women faculty as role models.
Today’s feature was shared with us by David Flaspohler If you have an article you think we should feature, please email it to advance-mtu@mtu.edu and we will consider adding it to the ADVANCE Weekly Roundup.
The ADVANCE Weekly Roundup is brought to you by ADVANCE at Michigan Tech, which is an NSF-funded initiative dedicated to improving faculty career success, retention, diversity, equity, and inclusion. To learn more about this week’s topic, our mission, programming efforts, and to check out our growing collection of resources, contact us at (advance-mtu@mtu.edu) or visit our website: www.mtu.edu/advance.