NSF award to Northeastern will advance women faculty

The National Science Foundation has awarded Northeastern University a $3.7 million grant to help overcome institutional barriers that limit the advancement of women in key academic fields, including the sciences, engineering and social sciences.

With the ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Award for Advancing Women in Interdisciplinary and International Networks, Northeastern’s five-year program will build on the university’s existing projects by focusing on increasing recruitment of women, providing opportunities for networking to help advance female faculty, and fostering leadership development to oversee these opportunities across university departments.

“Northeastern University is committed to diversity in all its forms, and the award is certainly a recognition of our leadership in this area,” said Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern. “It presents us with the opportunity to transform our university and shape a model that could be emulated by other institutions of higher learning."

Northeastern ADVANCE, working within the Office of the Provost, will engage academic leaders to build effective collaborative networks for female faculty across disciplinary, cultural and national lines.

“A robust representation of women among the leading faculty in science, engineering and social sciences can be achieved through universities becoming more attractive to female faculty in these disciplines, and more supportive of their advancement,” said Stephen W. Director, provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs. “This grant is an important part of Northeastern University’s transformation into an institution that more strongly encourages growth and success for women in academia.”

The ADVANCE project will be led by a team of faculty and administrators with Sara Wadia-Fascetti, associate vice provost for faculty advancement, as principal investigator; co-principal investigators on the team include Vice Provost Luis M. Falcon, Chemistry Department chair Graham Jones and professors Jackie Isaacs (mechanical and industrial engineering) and Kathrina Zippel (sociology and anthropology).

 Northeastern’s program will focus on three areas:

·  Enhanced recruitment of women  - in particular, women of color.

·  Networking and collaboration for women through their transition to tenured professorships.

·  Leadership development and accountability of university department chairs to increase the number of women in leadership positions and competences.

“Through leadership development and accountability, deans and department chairs will have a pivotal role in integrating women faculty more fully into the university’s global science and engineering centers and departments and in increasing their presence as scholars across the institution,” said Wadia-Fascetti.

“While the proposed institutional transformation through the Northeastern ADVANCE program is driven by the need to increase participation and advancement of women faculty, the program’s efforts will benefit all faculty members and should serve as tools for initiatives at other academic institutions,” she added.

Northeastern is one of nine new Institutional Transformation sites this year that join a group of 32 NSF-funded ADVANCE Institutional Transformation sites across the country.