Four College of Engineering Faculty Members Become UMass Amherst ADVANCE Fellows

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Four faculty members from the College of Engineering (CoE) have been selected to the 2023-2024 cohort of 49 UMass Amherst ADVANCE Fellows. The four new CoE ADVANCE Fellows are: Stacyann Bailey of the Biomedical Engineering Department; Lauren Andrews of the Chemical Engineering Department; Emily Kumpel of the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department; and Tingyi “Leo” Liu of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department. In addition, CEE Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director Caitlyn Butler has joined the ADVANCE Leadership Team. See UMass ADVANCE Announces 2023-24 Faculty Fellows.

According to ADVANCE, the fellowship “provides faculty members with a unique opportunity to participate in ADVANCE’s program of institutional transformation.” ADVANCE also explains that the “Fellows partner with the ADVANCE Leadership Team to provide the resources, recognition, and relationship building necessary to help faculty collaborate successfully and feel valued and included.”

Funded by the National Science Foundation ADVANCE Program, UMass ADVANCE focuses on equity for women faculty and faculty men of color in science, technology, engineering, and math by gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity, nationality, and other statuses.

In a campus-wide collaborative effort to transform the makeup of the teaching staff at UMass Amherst, the four COE faculty members have joined 45 other UMass academics in a quest to promote gender and racial equity for faculty at the university. Through a combination of research, programming, and practices, UMass ADVANCE seeks to understand systemic and intersectional inequalities at UMass and to lay the groundwork for a fairer, more equitable, diverse, and inclusive campus. 

The CoE ADVANCE Fellows will help cultivate faculty equity and inclusion through a bevy of ADVANCE initiatives. Among several other ADVANCE activities, the Fellows will liaise with their departments to promote the activities of the ADVANCE Program. They will inform ADVANCE about new and successful departmental equity and inclusion initiatives. They will provide feedback on programming and suggest additional programming or ADVANCE investments.

They will also inform their departments about upcoming ADVANCE workshops, events, grant opportunities, and awards, and they will encourage participation. And they will cultivate additional faculty members from their departments to become future ADVANCE Faculty Fellows.

Each year ADVANCE selects one faculty member per department or academic unit to serve as an ADVANCE Faculty Fellow. (October 2023)