This week’s article spotlights disability as an axis of diversity. According to this article, 26% of adult Americans have at least one disability, yet data from 2004 suggest that only 4% of faculty members report a disability. Stigmas or biases, inability to fund graduate education while maintaining necessary medical care, lack of role models, and . . .
Items related to systems within higher education and the academy. Ivory tower.
Post-Covid burnout, disengagement, and demoralization have become widespread throughout academia as in the broader workforce. We highlight two recent review essays in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In her essay, Rebecca Pope-Ruark explains burnout as “a collection of related symptoms, under the umbrellas of (1) exhaustion, (2) cynicism or depersonalization, and (3) feelings of reduced . . .
Today’s ADVANCE article comes from the field of medical sciences, where women are increasingly more prevalent; simultaneously, the field is moving towards more team approaches to research. The study authors collected a set of 6.6 million medical research papers over the last 20 years to assess the impacts of gender diversity among research authors on . . .
Candidate assessment rubrics are helpful in conducting objective faculty searches but do not adequately mitigate bias according to two recent studies. One four-year-long study of the searches in an Engineering department evaluated whether hiring rubrics countered biases. The study found that search committees consistently scored women candidates lower than men on rubrics about research although . . .
Speaking Up: How Department Leaders Can Change the Conversation in the Academic Workplace Have you ever asked yourself “Why didn’t I say something?” when a friend or colleague said or did something that was biased or uncivil at work? You’re not alone. Deciding whether and how to respond to these moments is complicated. Yet navigating . . .
There are many reasons to be sensitive to and acknowledge diverse experiences, values, beliefs, and ways of being. Our team works to highlight some reasons in the ADVANCE Weekly Roundup. However, occasionally situations come to our attention that we had not thought about previously. The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) requires . . .
The climate or community that we create within our classroom and within our academic units can profoundly impact how individuals perform within those settings. This recent study in the Journal of Chemical Education determined that students’ social belonging in a general chemistry course could predict academic performance in that course. Social belonging included both an . . .
Although the early years of the pandemic are behind us, and we are beginning to adjust to a “new normal” in our classrooms, labs, and professional activities, faculty continue to report feeling exhausted and over-stressed. Two recent essays in Inside Higher Ed suggest unique institutional responses: a “Chapter 11” work relief declaration and a return . . .
This article compares workload distributions among faculty in Tech and Engineering. It documents that women do more of the work to keep things running smoothly, often referred to as office “housework.” Such work rarely earns formal credit or recognition. In technology fields, women of color report that they are asked to lead HR or DEI . . .
A common problem on college campuses is that the people who most often choose to participate in workshops, trainings, committees, mentorships and other programs aimed at improving diversity, equity, inclusion, and sense of belonging (DEIS) are those same people that are already committed to such efforts. So, participants can feel they’re in an echo chamber, . . .