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CAREER: University Determinants of Women’s Academic Career Success
PI: Monica Gaughan
School
of Public Policy
Georgia Institute of Technology
monica.gaughan@pubpolicy.gatech.edu
Funded by: National Science
Foundation
Research on
Learning and Education
Education
and Human Resources Division
The objective of this 5-year CAREER project is to develop
data and methodology to incorporate university factors into the analysis of the
academic recruitment, retention, and advancement of female scientists and
engineers. The research team will be comprised of graduate students,
undergraduate students, and public school teachers during all phases of the
CAREER award. The team will: 1) develop a longitudinal contextual database of
faculty recruitment, retention, and advancement-related personnel practices in
Research Extensive Universities; 2) describe and characterize faculty-related
personnel practices in this academic sector; 3) link the contextual database to
individual-level data; and 4) develop statistical models to test academic career
trajectories within and between academic institutions.
1. Objectives and Significance
The under-representation of women in academic careers,
particularly at the most prestigious universities, has been well documented
(National Research Council 1979, 1983, 1987, 1991, 1992, 2001; National Science
Board 2002). During the past ten years, scholars and policy makers have given
increasing attention to the role that universities—as employers and working
environments—play in fostering inequitable career outcomes (Dietz et al. 2002;
European Commission 2001a; NRC 1991; Rosser and Lane 2002; Sonnert and Holton
1995). The policy theory driving this work is that women faculty will be more
successful in universities that have more gender progressive policies. However,
at the current time, there is no source of systematic and comprehensive data
about universities that would allow testing of this general hypothesis, or any
of the more specific ones that can be derived from it. The objective of this
CAREER project is to develop data and methodology that will test how university
personnel practices and policies affect the recruitment, retention, and
advancement of female faculty. Specifically, the project will enable: 1) the
development of a longitudinal database of faculty recruitment, retention, and
advancement-related personnel policies and practices in Carnegie Research
Extensive Universities (formerly Research I; McCormick 2001); 2) the description
and characterization of faculty-related personnel practices in this academic
sector; and 3) the linkage of the university database to individual-level data
to test multilevel statistical models that will explore how university personnel
practices and policies affect academic career success.
1.1 Questions
The CAREER study investigates the following questions:
1.
What are the university policies and practices that affect women’s recruitment,
retention, and advancement in academic careers, and how do they vary in their
timing, intensity, and function?
2.
Among the Research Extensive universities, what is the range of such policies
and practices?
3.
How have these policies and practices varied over time to create changing
opportunities for success?
4.
How can the measurement of policies and practices be used to rank universities
in terms of their ability to foster women’s success?
5. In
what ways and how do the policies and practices of universities affect the
career success of academic faculty, especially women?
6.
Using findings from the study, what are the most effective policies for
improving faculty equity in universities?
1.2 Goals and Objectives
Goals
1. To
understand the range and complexity of faculty-related personnel practices at
Research Extensive Universities.
2. To
develop models of academic career success that integrate institutional and
individual-level predictors.
3. To
improve knowledge about effective faculty-related personnel policies and
practices.
4. To
develop new statistical courses and expertise for the students of Georgia Tech,
and the profession as a whole.
5. To
integrate undergraduate and graduate students, and K-12 school teachers into the
conduct of research.
6. To
contribute to diversity-related service activities at the Institute and
beyond.
7. To
disseminate the substantive and methodological findings to scholarly and policy
audiences working in areas related to the scientific and technical workforce.
Specific Objectives
1. To
develop a public-use data set that characterizes the faculty-related personnel
policies and practices of Carnegie Extensive Universities.
2. To
use (1) to create a limited-access data set that links the institutional
characteristics of Universities to the career trajectories of individual
scientists.
3. To
use (2) to apply and demonstrate the value of hierarchical statistical
techniques to the study of academic career trajectories.
4. To
use the knowledge gained in (3) to develop a graduate-level statistics course
for the Institute in longitudinal and hierarchical data analysis.
5. To
use graduate research assistantships, Georgia Industrial Fellowships for
Teachers, Research Experience for Undergraduates, and the President’s
Undergraduate Research Award to assemble a diverse research group over time.
6. To
participate actively in the School’s Diversity Committee, and the Institute’s
NSF Advance project, the Women, Science, and Technology Program, the STEP
program, and the Diversity Center Planning Workgroup.
7. To
present and publish these findings widely and often.
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