The LEAD-it-Yourself! program will soon be launching a call for proposals to run faculty diversity workshops at your own institutions. Selected institutions will receive up to $4,000 in seed funding to plan and hold a workshop on your campus during 2016 or 2017 using the LiY! website.

Check out the LiY! website (www.advance.washington.edu/liy) in June for more details.

What tools and resources would you find helpful if you were planning a workshop for department chairs that focuses on STEM faculty diversity and inclusion?

Thanks for this important video! Can you talk about the strategies that have proven most effective in creating an environment that is friendly to women in engineering? You say you have these, but would love some specific examples. (There is a bit of a high bar to log in to your website).

What a great initiative! Do you have specific recruiting strategies you have found effective that you could discuss? What are some of the most prominent hurdles you face when recruiting?

Just came across another video on this topic of improving the culture of engineering for women. Take a look at http://videohall.com/p/673
You might have interesting resources to share!

Hi Joyce and Eve! Great to see your work in the Showcase! Love the LEAD IT program and would encourage others to employ this work at their institution.

The video that Joni is talking about is WEPAN’s Engineering Inclusive Teaching: Faculty Professional Development project—http://videohall.com/p/673 I think you might find the work interesting and would love to talk potential collaboration in the future!

Thank you for taking steps to share the techniques and tools that have helped your institution create an inclusive environment. The Lead-It-Yourself program sounds like a great tool.

Great program and great video! Love the footage of Irene Peden.

Sounds like a great program! I’m curious what feedback, if any, you’ve gotten from UW undergrad or grad students about what it’s like to have more female professors in the department.

Hi Sarah, thanks for viewing our video. You ask a good question. We haven’t surveyed our students but certainly many of us find ourselves meeting with female students often; serving as their mentors; and helping them navigate all kinds of challenging issues.

Some of the feedback we have gotten is that the female faculty candidates really appreciate learning about ADVANCE and they clearly recognize the advantages they will have at UW because of the professional development and community that we offer. Last year we hired a young woman who is a total superstar; she had 11 interviews and 11 offers! Clearly diversity and excellence go hand-in-hand.

Regards,
Eve

Great video! What are some of the challenges you expect when expanding the program to other universities? How do you plan to address them?

Hi Kelly, You ask a great question. We have an evaluation component to LEAD-it-Yourself! so we will be seeing how well the workshops given at other institutions match our model. It is OK if they differ but we consider fidelity to our model as a sign of success of the toolkit.

The biggest challenge we have faced is that building an entire website (that has many many features) has been much harder than we expected.

Thanks for your question,
Eve

This is a great effort and important work. How involved are male faculty in this effort?

Hi Eve & Joyce. Great video and such important work! So glad to have both of you working on this important initiative at UW and now beyond!

I am so inspired by your video and the LEAD project! I work with lots of career and technical education high schools in New York City, and they typically have mostly male students. I would love to explore how some of this project might be replicated in an engineering course at the high school level some day. Do you think there might be an opportunity for that at some point down the line?

Hi Sarah, Interesting question. Are you thinking of educating the faculty at the high school about bias against underrepresented groups in STEM or the students? Regardless, you could find resources on the LiY! website about bias that could be used to educate both audiences.

Thanks for your question,
Eve

HI, Eve and Joyce,
I have long been a fan of your important work. As you said above, Eve, the department chair role is one of the most challenging in the university—and I think one of the most important, as values, behaviors, and collegiality are shaped in such specific ways within departments. Thanks so much for all your work!
Ann