Faculty Spotlight
UTRGV’s current NSF ADVANCE Partnership grant, awarded in September 2022, builds upon our prior ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant. Our prior grant focused on creating a Psychological Healthy Workplace (PHW) where faculty could thrive.
This current project recognizes the importance of academic departmental climates in the recruitment, retention, and advancement of Latinas. Latinas represent one of the fastest-growing populations in the U.S., yet Latina faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers remain underrepresented. The goal of this project is to transform STEM departmental climates and cultures into psychologically healthy workplaces where Latina faculty can thrive in ways that maximize their scholarly productivity and advancement. The anticipated STEM department climate transformation focuses on equipping department chairs and their change teams with the resources needed to transform their departments' cultures into psychologically healthy workplaces for Latina and other faculty.
Our current project has the following objectives:
- Expose department change leaders and their teams to information and evidence-based practices on creating a Psychological Healthy Workplace (PHW);
- Engage STEM department change leaders in an annual spring Advancing Latina Faculty in STEM Summit for networking and resource sharing;
- Enable annual cohorts of STEM department chair-led change teams to transform their departments through intensive work guided by experienced facilitators/coaches; and
- Examine via social science research how empowerment-driven healthy workplace intervention programs for department chairs lead to improved diversity, climate, well-being, and productivity for Latinas in STEM.
More about our current project can be found on our “Initiatives” webpages.
Last updated: 4/8/2024