Claire Smith
Features Editor
csmith110@murraystate.edu
One group on campus is working to improve the retention and advancement of female faculty members.
ADVANCE Leadership begin in 2013, and they received their catalyst grant in 2015.
Meave McCarthy, director of the ADVANCE program and a mathematics professor, said the grant was used to study whether there were difficulties for women and women faculty members in the STEM departments.
“We were particularly interested in whether or not the comprehensive nature or the rural nature of Murray’s location had an impact on whether or not faculty were deciding to stay in their position or not,” McCarthy said.
The team for the project consists of McCarthy; David Balthrop, the dean of humanities and fine arts; Claire Fuller, the dean of Jones College; Paula Waddill, professor of psychology; and Robin Zhang, professor of Earth and environmental sciences.
“STEM includes all the departments in the college of science, engineering and technology. It includes all of agriculture,” McCarthy said. “It includes sociology, political science and psychology— all of which are in humanities and fine arts, and it includes computer science, which is in the college of business.”
The first grant was for three years, and the team is in the process of completing the grant.
Their new grant will begin on Oct. 1, and they will hire an administrative assistant and a program coordinator.
“This year we applied for another grant called an adaptation grant,” McCarthy said. “That’s the million dollar grant we just got.”
The purpose of the adaptation grant is to take programs from other universities and fit them to Murray State.
“We made a pitch to the National Science Foundation to adapt certain kinds of programs to Murray State,” McCarthy said. “So, in particular, we are going to be working with some faculty in the theatre department to develop some interactive theater training programs.”
Searches, tenure and promotions were identified during their climate study as areas where people saw issues with fairness and equity.
“Whether there are problems with fairness and equity is not something our study found,” she said. “What our study found is that there was a perception of that.”
The interactive theater training programs are based on a program from the University of New Hampshire.
The team will also begin doing writing workshops based upon work done at Jacksonville State, the University of Washington and the University of Nebraska.
ADVANCE will also continue to run their peer mentoring circles which are based on work that began at Ohio State University.
“Those have been running here at Murray State for three years and they’ll continue to run,” McCarthy said. “So, there are mentoring groups for women.”
The mentoring groups initially began with a focus on women faculty in STEM, but have since expanded to include all women faculty.
Ultimately, the goal is to foster retention among female faculty members in STEM programs.
“From the point of view of students at Murray State, I think it’s very important that all students have good role models,” she said.
McCarthy said she thinks this is an important issue because the University is all about students and they need positive role models.
“We pride ourselves here at Murray State in providing good role models for our students,” McCarthy said. “Your professors in a general sense should look like you, should be accessible to you, should be people you can talk to about your course and your life; and we are really in a role that is multifaceted.”
She said the ratio of female to male faculty members varies between each discipline. One discipline may have a 40 to 50 percent ratio where another may have a 15 to 20 percent ratio.
“We are starting off with programs aimed at women faculty in STEM but we foresee moving to a broader approach later,” she said.
McCarthy said faculty are enthusiastic, and women who have participated in the mentoring circles have said positive things in their end of year surveys.