National Programs

BRAINS is designed to accelerate and improve the career advancement of neuroscience postdoctoral and assistant professors from underrepresented groups. Participants build a strong sense of career self-efficacy through a combination of symposias, virtual workshops, peer networks, mentoring relationships, and career consultations over two-year periods.

LEAD-it-Yourself! (LiY!) is an online toolkit that enables academic institutions across the country to plan and host faculty leadership workshops. The LEAD-it-Yourself! website provides a forum in which institutions of higher education may share, customize, and rate open source leadership curricula and event planning materials with peers nationwide.

Interrupting Bias is a case study film and facilitation guide for faculty search committees. It illustrates common instances of bias that often occur during faculty hiring. The film and facilitation guide packet make it possible to disseminate this teaching tool to programs across the country. The film was first shown at the UW ADVANCE LEAD Workshop in June 2009. The case study film continues to be available online.

PEERs is a program for and by students to improve diversity at the University of Washington College of Engineering. During this grant, the PEERs program created an annual seminar exposing engineering students to factors impacting diversity, equity, and inclusion in engineering, two capacity building institutes, a college of engineering climate survey, and a cadre of engineering student advocates and allies (PEERs leaders). PEERs focuses on the long-term goal of increasing the participation of all underrepresented groups in engineering.

LATTICE included a professional development intervention for early-career, post-PhD women as they navigated engineering faculty careers and a research study to understand why the intervention works. LATTICE built on the experiences of the BRAINS, WEBS, and Peer Mentoring Summits programs.

On-Ramps was a series of national workshops offered for women Ph.D.s in STEM fields, currently working in industry and interested in transitioning to an academic career. Speakers were women who had already made successful transitions into academia, and topics addressed included transferring skills and strengths to the academic environment, creating a C.V., building a research program and more.

LEAD was a series of leadership development workshops for department chairs, deans, and emerging leaders in STEM offered from 2007-2009. Workshops addressed departmental and university culture and the professional development of faculty. Over 200 chairs, deans and faculty leaders from over 40+ institutions attended 3 national workshops. Past workshop materials and presentations are available online. LEAD grew out of 2 pilot national workshops, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

WEBS was an annual three-day symposium aimed at addressing the retention of female ecologists and evolutionary biologists and issues related to the transition of women from early career stages to tenure track positions and leadership roles in academic and research settings.