A newly formed coalition of female faculty members has been assembled to spearhead the university’s ongoing commitment to support the success of women in all academic disciplines, officials said.

The ADVANCE program, which was launched in October, brings together at least one senior female professor from each of the university’s colleges to oversee the work environment for female faculty in their respective disciplines. In collaboration with the college deans, these professors identify gender issues in their respective departments and provide mentorship for junior female faculty.

The program was born out of a $3.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to bridge the historically wide gender gap in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics — known in academia as STEM. Provost Nariman Farvardin and college deans pledged an additional $1.5 million in cost sharing to expand the program to all disciplines.

Two of the ADVANCE professors were specifically appointed to represent female faculty members of color, one for the STEM fields and another for non-STEM programs.

The coalition met for the first time Thursday, and Director Avis Cohen said she was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm expressed by group members and the support from the administration.

“It’s really a total institutional transformation,” Cohen said. “And I think that it will really mean that we will have inclusive excellence on this campus, which is very exciting … The outpouring of enthusiasm and excitement has been wonderful to see.”

Farvardin said he has taken personal interest in the program because he’s witnessed the gender gap in the science fields for much of his career as a professor and undergraduate student.

“As a student, I never had an engineering female faculty,” Farvardin said. “I had some in the sciences, but never in engineering. To me, that’s just bad.”

Although Farvardin will leave the university at the end of the month to assume the presidency of Stevens Institute of Technology, his recently named interim replacement, Vice President for Administrative Affairs Ann Wylie — a geology professor herself who said she has backed the ADVANCE program from the beginning — said she was committed to maintaining support for the initiative in the next year as acting provost.

“I am very passionate about helping women be successful,” Wylie wrote in an e-mail Friday.

In addition to the women’s coalition, the ADVANCE program will work in conjunction with the Office of Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment and the Office of Faculty Affairs this semester to conduct a campuswide survey of all full-time faculty about their perceptions of university work environments throughout academic departments.

This survey will be conducted again in 2013 and 2015 to observe any progress made, according to education professor KerryAnn O’Meara, who heads research and evaluation for the ADVANCE program.

“Every part of the survey will provide data that administrators and faculty themselves can use to try to improve conditions for faculty on campus,” O’Meara wrote in an e-mail. “The survey is meant to be a catalyst in that direction.”

The program is also offering interdisciplinary $20,000 seed grants — one for each college — for female researchers and is working to raise awareness of the value of women in the workplace among faculty.

And though much of the campus seems to have embraced this initiative, officials said much work is still needed to combat an academic culture that makes it more difficult for women to succeed.

Engineering professor Carol Espy-Wilson, a designated ADVANCE professor, said faculty members who are both female and of a racial minority are often underrepresented and underappreciated.

“Somehow, there’s some sort of barrier there for women faculty of color,” Espy-Wilson said.

“I don’t fully understand why it exists, but the fact that it does exist means that we have to work to minimize that invisibility and isolation that women of color often feel in the STEM fields.”

And with much of the campus behind them, this coalition of female faculty is prepared to provide the mentorship that had been missing and spearhead change for the better, Espy-Wilson said.

“It’s not that women need ‘help,'” Cohen said. “What they need is a culture that accepts what they’re doing and that will not punish them for doing it.”

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