ADVANCE program workshops are delivered in partnership with units across campus to extend and enhance our existing campus offerings. Our partners include the Provost’s Office, the Office of Equity and Inclusion, the Institute for Social Science Research, the Office of Faculty Development, the Massachusetts Society of Professors (faculty union), the Center for Research on Families, as well as the College of Education, the College of Natural Sciences, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the School of Public Health and Health Sciences.Please contact Donna Baron with any questions.
Fall 2023
Equitable Collaboration Practices for Faculty (JEDI Conference 2023)
September 13, 2023, from 2:00 – 3:30 PM, Room 174 Campus Center
With Jennifer Normanly, Professor and Head Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Co-PI UMass ADVANCE and Laurel Smith-Doerr, Professor of Sociology, PI UMass ADVANCE
This session is open to all faculty.
Research collaboration is essential in today's academy, but many collaborations reflect inequitable practices that undermine the success of the project. In this interactive workshop, we describe how to build collaborations that are transparent, equitable, and allow for creative growth through clear communication and respect for all contributions. This session utilizes case studies and covers UMass ADVANCE tools and checklists for approaches to creating, continuing, and crediting equitable research collaboration.
Centering Equity After Acute Crisis: Analyzing Disparities in COVID-19 Productivity Impacts by Faculty Rank, Gender, Race, and Caregiving Status
September 22, 2023 from 12:00 – 1:30 pm, LSL room N610 (lunch provided)
With Mark Pachucki, Associate Professor Sociology, Laurel Smith-Doerr, Professor Sociology and PI of UMass ADVANCE
Gender and racial diversity in knowledge production leads to greater creativity and innovation, but only when workplaces are equitable and integrated, allowing members to do their best work on a level playing field. This seminar seeks to report back to faculty initial findings from a computational text analysis of UMass data on pandemic impacts gathered from de-identified AY2019-20 annual faculty report information. An important study motivation is to reveal which types of faculty were initially most impacted, and to continue accounting for longer-term effects of pandemic disruptions to productivity and faculty equity. The goal is to identify mechanisms producing gendered and racialized outcomes in holistic productivity (service, teaching, scholarship) during and after a crisis. If mechanisms are not characterized, the pandemic era may mark a sharp decline in US faculty diversity and a corresponding drop in transformative innovation. There will be ample discussion time, with a focus on how findings might inform careful, equity-informed policy measures on our campus and beyond.
This seminar is presented in collaboration with the UMass Computational Social Science Institute (CSSI) and Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR).
Calling In: Creating Change Without Cancel Culture
September 25, 2023, 3:00pm faculty/staff workshop 5:00pm reception, Student Union Ballroom
With Loretta Ross, nationally-renowned educator/activist
Join activist Loretta Ross for "Calling In: Creating Change Without Cancel Culture" on Monday, Sept. 25, in the Student Union Ballroom. Events will include a workshop for faculty and staff at 3 p.m.; a reception at 5 p.m.; and a student workshop at 6 p.m.
Loretta J. Ross is a Professor at Smith College in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender where she teaches courses on white supremacy, human rights, and Calling In the Call Out culture. Loretta also is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellow, Class of 2022, for her work as an advocate of Reproductive Justice and Human Rights.
Loretta was the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective (2005-2012) and co-created the theory of Reproductive Justice. Loretta was National Co-Director of April 25, 2004, March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., the largest protest march in U.S. history at that time. She founded the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE) in Atlanta, Georgia, launched the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women (NOW), and was the national program director of the National Black Women’s Health Project. One of the first African American women to direct a rape crisis center, Loretta was the third Executive Director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center.
Equity Minded Workload Reform, Part 1 – Assessing Workload Challenges
September 29, 2023, from 10:00-12:00pm, Zoom
With Joya Misra, Provost Professor and Roy J. Zuckerberg Endowed Leadership Chair, Department of Sociology & School of Public Policy, Co-PI UMass ADVANCE, President, American Sociological Association
Many faculty members report feeling that workload in their department is unfairly distributed; women and faculty of color may be asked to carry out more than their share of work. This session provides clear, evidence-based practices to create better, fairer workloads for faculty through changing the “choice architecture” for the division of labor in departments. For example, dashboards with transparent displays of work activity data ensure that faculty understand performance expectations, and department Chairs and Heads are not making assignments in the dark. This session will be followed in February by a session (Part 2) that focuses on organizational policies and practices that can be adopted to proactively design more equitable workloads and reward systems.
Strategies and Tactics for Faculty Retention through Inclusive Promotion and Evaluation (STRIPE) with LEAD+
October 20, 2023, 12:30 – 2:00 pm, Zoom
With Wilmore Webley, Assoc Professor & Senior Vice Provost for Equity & Inclusion and Laurel Smith-Doerr, Professor of Sociology and PI, UMass ADVANCE
Please email ofd@umass.edu to register or for more information.
This session welcomes all Department Heads/Chairs and Associate Deans
This workshop will be an opportunity to learn the best new strategies for setting the stage for equitable evaluation at department- and college-level reviews of faculty. The discussions in this interactive workshop will lay the groundwork for a fair and equitable review of promotion candidate records, by highlighting how to identify practices that help committees to avoid bias. The workshop will also guide participants in how to view inclusive promotion evaluation as an effective tool for the retention of faculty from groups historically underrepresented in the academy through discussion and assessment of relevant case studies.
This workshop is presented in partnership with the Office of Faculty Development's LEAD+ series.
Gender and Retention Patterns among US Faculty
November 8, 2023, 12:00 – 1:30 pm, LGRC (A112)
With Aaron Clauset, Professor of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder
Women remain underrepresented among faculty in nearly all academic fields in the U.S. However, despite broad interest in measuring, explaining, and mitigating gendered attrition in faculty careers, the scale and heterogeneity of American higher education has impeded a full understanding of its magnitude and variation, and whether men and women leave academia for similar or different reasons.
Using a census of 245,270 tenure-track and tenured professors at U.S.-based PhD-granting departments, we show that women leave academia overall at higher rates than men at every career age, in large part because of strongly gendered attrition at lower-prestige institutions, in non-STEM fields, and among tenured faculty. These results contrast with the historical focus of studies on high-prestige institutions, on STEM fields, and on pre-tenure faculty. A large-scale survey of the same faculty indicates the reasons faculty leave are gendered, even for institutions, fields, and career ages in which retention rates are not. Specifically, women are more likely to feel pushed from their jobs and less likely to feel pulled towards better opportunities, and women leave or consider leaving due to workplace climate issues more often than work-life balance issues, which is the most popular explanation of gendered faculty attrition. These results (i) quantify the systemic nature of gendered faculty retention, (ii) highlight its variation with career age, institutional prestige, and field, and (iii) sharpen the importance of understanding the gendered reasons for attrition rather than focusing on rates alone. There will be ample time for discussion of the implications of these results for policy and prospects of gender equity.
This workshop is presented in collaboration with the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences and the Computation Social Science Institute (CSSI)
Spring 2024
Equity Minded Workload Reform, Part 2 - Policies
February 9, 2024, from 10:00-12:00pm, Zoom
With Joya Misra, Provost Professor and Roy J. Zuckerberg Endowed Leadership Chair, Department of Sociology & School of Public Policy, Co-PI UMass ADVANCE, President, American Sociological Association
Many faculty members report feeling that workload in their department is unfairly distributed; women and faculty of color may be asked to carry out more than their share of work. This session provides clear, evidence-based practices to create better, fairer workloads for faculty through changing the “choice architecture” for the division of labor in departments. We discuss a variety of approaches to workload equity such as rotating time-intensive roles, reducing and restructuring committees, creating policies for service and teaching assignments, using benchmarks by rank, or developing crediting systems that can help departments create fairer workload for all faculty. This session follows a session in September (Part 1) and focuses on organizational policies and practices that can be adopted to proactively design more equitable workloads and reward systems.
