VT-ADVANCE Offers Helpful Advice

In the midst of snow and ice storms, PI Marcia Harrison, Program Director Tina Cartwright and Program Assistant Heidi Williams traveled to Blacksburg, VA to meet with the Virginia Tech ADVANCE program leaders.  Beginning the 4^th year of their award, they had much advice and guidance to pass on to a new program like ours.

Perhaps the most discussed issue was the importance of assessing the campus climate as perceived by the faculty. After nearly two years of discussion, Virginia Tech solicited help from the provost and the faculty senate to develop and conduct their first climate survey. It was evident that the majority of faculty identify most closely with their departments; therefore, they are more responsive to surveys at this level. VT-ADVANCE realized that they needed to provide more information on the ADVANCE program to everyone, especially minorities, to alleviate any concerns surrounding the survey. This fall, VT-ADVANCE will launch a follow-up climate survey.

VT-ADVANCE provided the following helpful hints to help guide the new MU-ADVANCE program:

• Advertise open university positions on multicultural websites. This shows candidates that the university is committed to diversity.

• Facilitate a group of women to meet with all female candidates, to represent a network of female faculty. It would be ideal to have faculty from different departments join the group to offer different perspectives on the campus/college. This will provide a more complete background on the university.

• Hold ADVANCE seminars for junior faculty to encourage their involvement. One suggestion is to have the sponsored research program on campus conduct a workshop to discuss the grant process.  This will educate the junior faculty to the grant circulation process through the university, and will encourage them to write their own grants, by easing and demystifying the process.

• Develop a peer-mentoring system that will create groups of assistant professors and encourage them to build on-campus networks. The goal is to get junior faculty to meet and support each other.

• Implement new policies that can have a positive effect on faculty. An example of such a policy, “Stop the Clock”, suspends the probationary pre-tenure period for major life events such as the birth of a child or a major illness in the family. Some schools, such as Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech have had such a policy in place for many years.

The VT-ADVANCE team was very willing to generously offer advice and share their experiences with our fledging program. We send our deepest condolences to them in this time of tragedy and hope that their campus community is able to move forward together in healing.

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