Leadership Excellence for Academic Diversity
Program Overview
LEAD was a series of national leadership workshops, offered annually, for department chairs, deans, and emerging leaders in science, engineering, and mathematics (SEM). These workshops addressed departmental and university culture and the professional development of faculty. At these workshops, participants:
- Learned practical strategies and tools to improve department culture and climate.
- Explored unintended and unconscious biases that disproportionately impact women and underrepresented faculty.
- Addressed important issues such as the recruitment and selection of faculty, the evaluation of faculty performance, conflict resolution, and leadership.
- Discussed case studies on faculty and departmental life.
These workshops were based on the leadership workshop series and two national pilot workshops run by the University of Washington ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change.
This program, which concluded in 2010, was funded with a 4-year grant from the National Science Foundation's ADVANCE Program, which strives to increase the participation and advancement of women faculty in science and engineering.
Additional Information about the LEAD program can be found in the LEAD Overview Summary and the LEAD Final Report Summary (September 2010). Best practices and lessons learned from LEAD are shared via the NSF-funded LEAD-it-Yourself! Project, an online toolkit to disseminate planning and educational materials to help individuals organize leadership workshops to advance STEM faculty diversity and inclusion.
Workshop Resources
Resources from past LEAD workshops, including: agendas, presentations, case studies, and handouts, can be found here:
- 2007 LEAD Workshop - Seattle, WA
- 2008 LEAD Workshop - Seattle, WA
- 2009 LEAD Workshop - Fayetteville, AK
Resources by topic can be found here:
- Communication Skills
- Difficult Decisions
- Faculty Recruitment
- Faculty Retention
- Managing Up & Down
- Mentoring Faculty
- Policy & Chair Responsibilities
- Social Styles
- Strategic Planning
- Women and Underrepresented Minorities in STEM
- Work/Life Balance
- Case Studies
About Us
These workshops were part of the work of the ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change (CIC) at the University of Washington. The Principal Investigator (PI) was Dr. Ana Mari Cauce. The Co-PIs were Dr. Eve Riskin and Dr. Joyce Yen.
Partner institutions who provided ideas for the workshops and feedback included:
Contact Us
Please feel free to contact us with your suggestions and/or questions at: advcic@uw.edu.