Hello Mayra! Congratulations on your work and the grant for assistive technologies for people with disabilities! I started watching the video and recognized Cristina's voice! Cristina and Lourdes Medina (in your department) participated in the project. I think that there is a snippet of Cristina in the video. Please consider coming to the LACCEI conference this year in Peru! http://wp.eng.fau.edu/laccei2018/. Cristina and Lourdes were guests last year. Wishing you continued success!

Hi Renetta! It is great to see your video. In fact it was me, testing most of the products designed by students.

Thank you Cristina! Congratulations on your video project with your colleague! I recognized your voice as soon as the video started!

Hi Danielle, I see that Beatriz has already addressed your question, and I wanted to add that we have seen several of the women participants advance to new ranks, e.g., tenure, associate department chair. The Chancellor of UMET was a co-PI on this project, so he was very supportive. He took on the task of connecting with VPs and chancellors within the three systems in Puerto Rico to make them aware of the project, and to share that these kinds of programs for women should be supported. We learned that higher-level administrators didn't have a problem with women participating in the program, but that actualizing some of the recommendations took a bit more effort. I think that one of the biggest things that we were able to do was to a) empower the faculty to move toward leadership, with an eye on career-life balance, and b) prepare the higher-level leaders to be ready receive  and grant requests for travel to conferences to present research, modified teaching loads, etc. 

Thank you Beatriz and Renetta for the response. I'm curious to learn if and how the participant's perception of their institution's policy changed post program or once they advanced to higher ranks in the institution, i.e. was it being better prepared and equipped to navigate the process of advancement or was it a change in culture or a combination? 

Also, are their plans to expand the program to institutions beyond PR where women of color are underrepresented culturally and racially in addition to gender? 

Dear Danielle,

It was a combination of both. Many of the women in our project were very dedicated to their institutions, and did not plan to leave. Information and advocacy were key. 

The grant ended a few years ago, so there aren't fully developed resources to scale, other than sharing what we have learned via dissemination. Our workshops included a lot of role-playing (negotiation), discussion (awareness among provosts), and attention to career-life balance (CLB). CLB was huge because there were simple things that could be changed such as not having faculty meetings in the evening, when many women faculty were take care of families. Recognition and awards also made a difference, as more faculty began to be nominated for recognitions within and beyond their institutions. There are some best practices that can be shared. This was an ADVANCE adaptation project, so there were some things that had already been implemented by UMBC that were modified for the schools in Puerto Rico. The culture was very different, so some of the best things that came out of those meetings were operating in a way that didn't "fit" traditional norms of the academy. Having a meeting for women faculty with music, sofas, recognition of their schools (flags), their achievements (posters), and having provosts in that space to share in it, along with presidents who reinforced the messaging was quite empowering.

Thank you Cristina! Wishing you continued success! I will be at ASEE in Salt Lake, and LACCEI in Peru ... perhaps WEEF in New Mexico in November too!

Yay! We will see each other at Salt Lake City in June!

Hello Whitney,

We had an unusual exercise where we asked participants to make a poster of their schedule for personal life and professional life - in columns, side by side, and then talk about the integration of the two. Most of the strategies included re-negotiating time and duties. For example, rising early to write for 2 hours in the morning was a best practice. Some people developed a mutual "Run and write" schedule where they would plan time to get in some physical exercise, and an hour of writing before 7 AM. Some faculty re-negotiated meeting times so that they didn't have so many "gaps" in the day, which allowed them to be more productive. They preferred schedules that gave longer breaks at the beginning or end of the day, so that their days on campus could be optimized. Moving meetings to earlier times in the day was a key factor. Another issue was sharing and acknowledging family time, including both child and elder care, and making these more connected with everyday conversation instead of pretending that they were separated and didn't exist. 

Dear Jay,

The program was focused on women in all STEM fields because it was an ADVANCE initiative. We had faculty in the social sciences, and the Chancellor of UMET (via outcomes from this program) sponsored (with other funds) some initiatives such as "publication/writing sessions" for faculty from all disciplines, including social sciences, nursing, communications, etc. Years ago, an NSF Director (Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr) mentioned in a meeting the the social sciences were part of the "S" in STEM. I believe that there are only a few programs at NSF that don't include social sciences --- it may depend on the representation within a demographic. 

ADVANCE in general, has plenty of data related to different problems, these include time in the lab (bench scientists), being in male-dominated fields and being disrespected or not acknowledged by male colleagues, and much more. Some strong work has been disseminated by the University of Michigan: http://advance.umich.edu/climatestudies.php. Many programs, including ours, had climate studies. 

Reports such as this one from MIT help with policies: http://facultygovernance.mit.edu/sites/default/.... Many universities these days seem to be using such reports as evidence for discussions that lead to new policies, or in some cases, strengthening policies that are already on the books, but had previously been ignored or underutilized.

Dear Doris, Following on to Beatriz' comment, we used to have a blog, but we didn't continue it. At present, Beatriz keeps participants informed of updates via her email list, but you bring up a good point. We may consider developing a special issue with updates, that we can use to revive the blog and social media channel.

Best,

Renetta