Transforming Academic Departments

The program for Transforming Academic Departments builds on the expertise of gender equity scholars to offer a framework for department chair leadership development by providing information about best practices for recruiting and retaining women and minority faculty, managing departmental climate (including countering gender bias), and ensuring faculty success in tenure and promotion reviews.

  
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Resources for Department Chairs
This wiki includes information provided by ADVANCE at Brown chairs workshops and visiting scholar presentations. It also includes resources on letters of recommendation & evaluation, work/family balance, and general resources on issues including recruitment, retention, and departmental climate.
 
Department Chairs Workshops

The goal of the Department Chairs Workshops is to provide department chairs with information and skills that will have a positive effect on faculty development and departmental climate, facilitate communication between chairs to share experiences and best practices, and to integrate the broader goals of the ADVANCE Program by weaving information and discussion about issues of diversity and gender to improve the recruitment, retention, and promotion of women faculty.

  • Mentoring Faculty on Proposal Writing, Apr 2008
    Lead by Clyde Briant, the Vice President for Research, this workshop addresses the role of department chairs in mentoring new and mid-career faculty in the area of research funding opportunities. Topics included campus resources for assisting with the grant proposal writing process, the changing funding environment, conflict of interest, and broader impact issues.
  • Recognizing Gender Bias in Letters of Recommendation, Oct 2009
    Presented by Associate Dean Shelley Cyr and Dr. Barbara Silver of the URI ADVANCE Program
  • Faculty & Families: Negotiating Dual Career Hires & Caretaking Leaves, Nov 2009
    Presented by Senior Associate Dean Elizabeth Doherty, Office of the Dean of the Faculty
 
Visiting Scholars Program

The purpose of the Visiting Scholar Program is to provide greater in-house consultation to chairs and directors regarding best practices for recruiting and retaining women in the sciences. See our wiki for the PowerPoint presentations of these visiting scholar sessions.

  • Effective Strategies for Diversifying STEM, Aug 2007
    Provided by Dr. Lisa Frehill, this presentation includes data resources and tools for discussing personal bias. It describes the the development of strategies undertaken by a group of faculty, administrators and diversity experts from 7 universities worked as teams to evaluate and propose strategies for use in STEM departments. Includes action items for faculty, chairs, and administrators during all stages of the search process.
  • Recruitment and Retention Guidelines that Enhance Diversity in Faculty Searches, Sep 2008
    Presented by Dr. Virginia Valian, this session provides guidelines for chairs and administrators with regard to recruitment and retention.
  • Stealing the Best Talent in an Era of Tight Budgets, Oct 2008
    Presented by Dr. Joan Williams, this session deals with the pheneomenon of top-tier universities and colleges increasingly find themselves competing with lower ranked schools—and losing—as lower-ranked institutions use dual-career hiring policies to attract the most desirable candidates.
  • The Role of Department Chairs in Institutional Change: Lessons from MIT, Oct 2009
    Presented by Dr. Nancy Hopkins, this session describes the ways in which MIT department chairs have addressed gender equity issues over the course of the past decade and the benefit to their departments.