Category: ADVANCE Weekly Roundup

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Allyship for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Sense of Belonging

A critical component of promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and sense of belonging (DEIS) is deep and meaningful collaboration that enacts allyship. This is a cooperative model whereby people from diverse backgrounds, especially those with power and privilege, join together in solidarity to overcome systems that disadvantage some groups, including unlearning assumptions about what constitutes “help” . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Foundational Strategies to Create Equitable Systems for Faculty

As pandemic effects continue, fostering equitable climates to retain high quality faculty and staff is more important than ever.  The UMass ADVANCE team outlines four foundational strategies: communication, resources, flexibility, and adapting equity-informed strategies. Meaningful communicative interactions and supportive resources are critical to faculty and staff job satisfaction.  In addition, flexible policies and practices remain . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Eliminating the penalties for motherhood in STEM

The COVID-19 pandemic has called attention to the impediments that women in STEM face as mothers, including a multipronged “maternal wall” with career-long ramifications. This week’s Roundup takes you to a virtual conference, “Motherhood and career retention in STEM: Systemic barriers and actionable solutions” held on May 5, 2021. The event was sponsored by Mothers . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: STEMinists: Young role models for women in STEM

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 . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Safety is everyone’s responsibility

Safety in any workplace, whether corporate or academic, is not achieved  by just providing students, faculty and staff with appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) to conduct their research or work safely. Creating safety in the workplace also includes intentionally crafting a psychologically safe environment where individuals feel they can speak up, express their concerns, and . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Metastudy on Biases in Student Teaching Evaluations

Research into Student Teaching Evaluations often focus on what such evaluations actually measure and the inherent biases about instructors that can disadvantage or advantage particular faculty. This article in Inside Higher Ed reports on a metastudy that addresses both measurement and equity biases in student evaluations and suggests strategic responses for higher education institutions. One . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Hispanic Heritage Month: Celebrate STEM Latinx researchers while also noting gender disparities

Hispanic Heritage Month is an opportunity to recognize the accomplishments of Hispanic and Latinx scientists and engineers whose groundbreaking discoveries have advanced our knowledge.  This article provides a gender diverse list of role models for students across a variety of STEM careers.  We encourage you to feature these notable scientists in your courses. Today’s feature . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Do you promote safe space for discussions of authorship that are fair and equitable?

It is well documented that women are underrepresented in senior author positions on published and scholarly works, and more harshly treated in the peer review process. Women are also more likely to be involved in disagreements about authorship than men, and face greater negative consequences of such disagreements. This is one of the findings reported . . .

ADVANCE Weekly Roundup: Gender disparities in research dissemination persist even in social media

Social media has become a powerful network of sharing and featuring scientific results. A recent article in PNAS tracked online social media mentions of published scientific findings and discovered that research published by women doesn’t get the same number of posts or mentions as research published by male scientists. Women’s representation in social media is . . .