Education & Empowerment
Objective: Promote campus awareness and workplace diversity, and empower faculty and administrators to address gender equity.
- Communication & Dissemination. We organize seminars, workshops, and lectures, including those given by nationally recognized leaders, to inform various participants across campus about the gender issues in STEM and our initiatives aimed at transforming the academic culture at UTRGV.
- Women Faculty Network (WFN) The mission of the WFN is to empower women faculty by advocating for opportunities to advance their professional development in research, teaching, and service, while balancing their personal, career, physical, and mental health demands at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. The WFN had its first meeting in Edinburg on December 6, 2012. With a set of official WFN bylaws signed by the Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Student Success, and P-16 Integration, the WFN has six standing committees: Achievement and Advancement; Mentoring, Outreach, and Membership; Tenure/Promotion/Annual Review Issues; Wellness; Workplace Climate & Equity, and Women of Color. The WFN is represented on key UTRGV leadership committees, including the Academic Affairs Executive Council, and has an active list-serv used to disseminate important and timely information across campus.
- Providing Training to Search Committees. Trainings for search committees have been conducted in conjunction with the Recruitment component (details are provided in the Recruitment component). In addition, campus-wide trainings/workshops focusing on best practices to minimize implicit bias are given to all Tenure/Promotion committee members, Department Chairs, and Deans.
- Workshops, Seminars and Distinguished Speakers. In addition to the WFN workshops/talks and the Search and Tenure/Promotion Committee trainings, additional campus-wide presentations/workshops are sponsored to raise awareness about gender equity and diversity, issues and challenges women face in academia, implicit bias, and best practices/strategies to address such issues, especially as they relate to women in STEM.
Leader: