By Annette Finley-Croswhite

Last summer, Old Dominion University received a three-year, $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to increase the number of women, particularly women of color, in STEM fields at the university. The project, titled “Re-envisioning Inclusive and Sustainable Excellence (RISE): Advancing Women in STEM at Old Dominion University,” examines the barriers female faculty face in seeking tenure and promotion and has three goals:

• Increase the recruitment and hiring of women, particularly women of color, in STEM teaching staff.
• Increase tenure and promotions of women, particularly women of color, in STEM fields;
• Improve department climate to promote inclusivity.

Recognizing the importance of the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, ability, and age in creating social inequalities, the fellowship focuses on the intersection of gender, race, and international status to examine the experiences of women in STEM on our campus. The results of the fellowship, lessons learned, and activities developed to improve the experiences of women in STEM on the ODU campus may also be used by other disciplines and institutions of higher education in the future.

Over the past year, PI Austin Agho (Chief Integration Officer and Advisor to the President) and co-PIs Annette Finley-Croswhite (Academic Affairs and Humanities), Shanda Jenkins (Academic Affairs), Vukica Jovanovic (Engineering), and Stacie Ringleb (Engineering) have grappled with the challenges common in the start-up phase of many grants.

Staff changes due to retirements necessitated the search for new faculty to lead the effort. Holly Gaff, professor and head of biological sciences, and Yvette Pearson, vice provost for faculty affairs and strategic initiatives, agreed to join the RISE team.

In December, Mahfoudha Sid’Elemine was hired as program coordinator. Sid’Elemine, who will receive her doctorate in international studies from ODU in 2023, was born and raised in Mauritania and said she is the first woman in her country to ever receive a doctorate.

Other aspects of the grant required further expansion of the team. One of the critical activities related to increasing tenure and advancing women includes establishing “launch teams” in each of the four STEM colleges included in the grant: science, engineering, business, and liberal arts. The National Science Foundation found that two disciplines in the Strome College of Business, Information Technology & Decision Sciences and Economics, and two disciplines in the Batten College of Arts and Letters, Sociology and Criminal Justice and Geography, meet its criteria as STEM disciplines.

Launch team coordinators have been named in each of the four colleges: Wayne Hynes for science, Stacie Ringleb for engineering, Soo-Hoon Lee for business, and Kristian Petersen for humanities and letters. Over the coming year, they will develop onboarding initiatives designed to help first-year faculty members on the tenure track succeed from the start of their careers at ODU. Likewise, Equity Advisors have been established to work with Co-PI Shanda Jenkins, director of the Office of Faculty Diversity and Retention. They are Dan Barshis (science), Carol Considine (engineering), Hua Liu (geography), and Vanessa Panfil (sociology and criminal justice). Equity Advisors will work with the PI and Co-PIs to improve the faculty climate to increase inclusivity.

Much of the first year was spent gaining Institutional Review Board approval for a climate survey. Once approved, the survey was distributed to nearly 300 STEM faculty in April and will be administered again in the fall. ODU’s internal evaluator for the grant, Joe Brobst of the ODU Center for Educational Partnerships, helped evaluate the data. In addition, external evaluator Sue Giancola of the University of Delaware sent a representative to campus to meet with deans, chairs, and faculty members to better understand the experiences of female STEM faculty on our campus. Combined with data from the 2023 Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE), new data offered insights that will be used to shape conversations, strategies, and interventions.

The RISE team of PI, co-PIs, and program coordinator Elemine attended the 2024 ADVANCE Equity in STEM Community Convening Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, where they met with members of RISE’s External Advisory Board. The advisory board members will travel to ODU in September to discuss the grant’s progress and provide advice on preparing for the second year.

The fellowship also has a steering committee consisting of the PI, co-PIs, Gaff, Pearson and Brobst, and Khan Iftekharuddin (engineering) and Barbara Hargrave (science). In addition, the deans and interim deans of the four colleges, Dean Gail Dodge (science), Dean Jeff Fergus (engineering), Dean Laura Delbrugge (arts and literature), and interim dean Erika Marsillac (business), are informed of the fellowship’s goals and activities and will attend monthly meetings with the PI and co-PIs beginning in the fall.

PI Agho is excited about the progress made so far in scholarship work. “Increasing representation and advancement of women, especially women of color, in STEM fields at ODU will not only increase diversity among the faculty and ensure greater gender equity on campus, but will also contribute to a more diverse workforce in our country,” he said.

“I am looking forward to the second year of the scholarship and am excited to see concrete results.”

For more information about RISE at ODU, visit their website.