Advancing Intersectional Equity among Faculty: Evidence from the NSF ADVANCE Program

Session Submission Type: Invited Session (90 minute)

Description

The NSF ADVANCE program has a long history of supporting interventions to make systematic changes on college campuses to increase the intersectional gender diversity and equity of STEM departments. The program has led to many changes in how faculty members are hired, promoted, and supported, for example, through work-family policies or leadership programs. Sociologists have been heavily involved in ADVANCE programs, particularly once it became clear that social science research was important to the enterprise of “institutional transformation.” ADVANCE-funded research has not only drawn on but also contributed to sociological theories of gendered and racialized organizations, expectation states theory, as well as relational inequalities.

Yet, this knowledge has been challenged. On the right, the federal government has been working to reduce spending on “illegal DEI,” defunding programs like ADVANCE based on the idea that it creates inequalities by advantaging women and people of color within higher education. On the left, including within sociology, many have critiqued the effectiveness of these programs, suggesting that they have led to cosmetic changes rather than true institutional transformation. What have we learned about how to create systemic change? How have sociological ideas about intersectionality become embedded more broadly in understandings of inequality in higher education? What role has sociology played in designing and evaluating programs associated with ADVANCE? What can be carried forward, given the current environment?

Sub Unit

• Thematic Session

Presider

• Joya Misra, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Panelists

• Kris De Welde, College of Charleston

• Shauna A. Morimoto, University of Arkansas

• Enobong (Anna) Branch, Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Session Organizers

• Joya Misra, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

• Beth Rushing, Appalachian College Association