Building Community Through Professional Development: The LATTICE Program
- Conference
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2019 CoNECD - The Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity
- Location
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Crystal City, Virginia
- Publication Date
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April 14, 2019
- Start Date
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April 14, 2019
- End Date
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April 22, 2019
- Conference Session
- Tagged Topics
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Diversity and Special Topic: Identity
- Page Count
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22
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--31746
- Permanent URL
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https://strategy.asee.org/31746
- Download Count
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312
Paper Authors
Cara Margherio University of Washington
Cara Margherio is the Assistant Director of the UW Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity (CERSE). Cara manages the evaluation of several NSF- and NIH-funded projects, primarily working with national professional development programs for early-career academics from groups underrepresented in STEM. She is also currently serving as a Virtual Visiting Scholar of the ADVANCE Research and Coordination Network. Her research is grounded in critical race and feminist theories, and her research interests include community cultural wealth, counterspaces, intersectionality, and institutional change.
Coleen Carrigan California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Dr. Coleen Carrigan is an assistant professor of Anthropology and Science, Technology and Society (STS) at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Using ethnography, she investigates the historical and cultural dimensions of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), with a particular emphasis on Computer Science and Engineering, and why these high-status fields appear impervious to desegregation. Dr. Carrigan shares the findings from her research to foster welcoming environments for underrepresented groups in STEM and transform the powers of technology to advance social justice.
Joyce Yen University of Washington
Joyce Yen, Ph.D., is the Director of the ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change at the University of Washington where she focuses on advancing women and underrepresented minority faculty in STEM fields and leading faculty professional development programs. Her diversity and faculty work has received over $6.7 million in grant funding. She holds a M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She was awarded the 2012 University of Washington David B. Thorud Leadership Award and the 2017 WEPAN Inclusive Culture and Equity Award.
Marie Claire Horner-Devine
Dr. Claire Horner-Devine is the co-founder and co-director of three, federally funded, national programs (BRAINS, WEBS, and LATTICE) designed to accelerate and improve the career advancement of early-career women and researchers from underrepresented groups in STEM. She is also is the founder of Counterspace Consulting and creates professional development and leadership opportunities for STEM professionals, grounded in social science research and with equity, diversity and inclusion at their core. She has published this work in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, CBE – Life Sciences Education and Neuron.
Dr. Horner-Devine received her B.A from Princeton University and her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and has published her work in community ecology, microbial ecology and conservation biology in journals such as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Ecology. She worked as a faculty member in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington for almost a decade. She also served as Director of Leadership and Diversity in the College of the Environment at UW.
Eve A. Riskin University of Washington
Eve Riskin received her BS degree in Electrical Engineering from
M.I.T. and her graduate degrees in EE from Stanford. Since 1990, she
has been in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Washington where
she is now Associate Dean of Diversity and Access in the College of
Engineering, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Faculty Director of the
ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change. With ADVANCE, she works on
mentoring and leadership development programs for women faculty in
SEM. She was awarded a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, a
Sloan Research Fellowship, the 2006 WEPAN University Change Agent
award, the 2006 Hewlett-Packard Harriett B. Rigas Award, and the 2017 ECEDHA
Diversity Award. She is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Julie Ivy North Carolina State University
Julie Simmons Ivy is a Professor in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Fitts Faculty Fellow in Health Systems Engineering. She previously spent several years on the faculty of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. She received her B.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan. She also received her M.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering with a focus on Operations Research at Georgia Tech. She is President of the Health Systems Engineering Alliance (HSEA) Board of Directors. She is an active member of the Institute of Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), Dr. Ivy served as the 2007 Chair (President) of the INFORMS Health Applications Society and is a past President for the INFORMS Minority Issues Forum. Her research interests are mathematical modeling of stochastic dynamic systems with emphasis on statistics and decision analysis as applied to health care, public health, and humanitarian logistics.
Christine S. Grant North Carolina State University
Dr. Christine S. Grant joined the NC State faculty in 1989 after completing her M.S. and Ph.D. (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Sc.B. (Brown University) all in Chemical Engineering (ChE). One of less than 10 African-American women full ChE professors in the country, her research interests are in interfacial phenomena and recently biomedical systems. She is the first Associate Dean of Faculty Advancement in NC State’s College of Engineering. Awards/service include 2015 AAAS Mentor Award, Fellow in American Institute of Chemical Engineers Board of Directors, NSF Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Math and Engineering Mentoring, Council for Chemical Research Diversity Award. She is the founding director of the Promoting Underrepresented Presence on Science and Engineering Faculties (PURPOSE) Institute”. A certified coach, Grant consults and empowers STEM individuals at all levels in the academy towards excellence in career and professional development. Her workshops on mentoring and academic career development for NSF ADVANCE programs at Purdue, Cornell, Texas A&M, University of Toledo, UVA, Prairie View A&M, and the ADVANCE Annual PI meetings promote STEM faculty development while providing diverse role models for students. She has mentored and empowered hundreds of faculty, students and postdocs.
Abstract
Launching Academics on the Tenure-Track: an Intentional Community in Engineering (LATTICE) is a national program to increase the retention and advancement of women academics in engineering and computer science. This NSF ADVANCE funded effort has a focus on community, ongoing connections, and professional development to support women as they navigate the postdoctoral and junior faculty stages. These early career stages are a crucial time of transition, and an important opportunity for retention of women in engineering and computer science. For individuals who are an “only” in terms of their social identity (e.g., gender, race, sexuality, ability status, etc.), the isolation during this transitional period can be particularly acute. Research shows that a strong connection to community can counter this isolation, and that the resulting sense of belonging is important to individual success and persistence in STEM. The LATTICE program is designed to build community and ongoing support while providing professional development. This presentation will introduce the LATTICE program theory and design, then discuss evaluation findings, unexpected challenges, and planned modifications to continue to improve the program. The LATTICE program begins with a four-day symposium that weaves together professional development skill building and conversations about social identity. The symposium activities and resulting community lay the foundation for deeper and ongoing support through the peer Mentoring Circles. Each Mentoring Circle, composed of eight to nine participants, provides a frequent and safe forum to discuss concerns, gain perspective, problem-solve, and set personal goals. The first LATTICE symposium was held May 18-21, 2017 with participants who were early-career women from electrical engineering and computer science. The second LATTICE symposium for women in any field of engineering who are underrepresented minorities will be held May 30-June 2, 2019. Evaluation data shows that the LATTICE symposium is a valuable experience for participants, who benefit both from the information discussed and the relationships they began at the symposium. Further, the Mentoring Circles help build community, while providing needed support and accountability. Within several months of participation, participants perceive that the LATTICE program is having a positive impact on their self-confidence and ability to proactively engage in career-building behaviors, such as asking for resources, seeking advice, and starting collaborations. Participants self-reported statistically significant improvements in both self-efficacy and networking activity.
LATTICE participants came to the first symposium with a wide array of experiences and perceptions of bias. In order to more fully address the intersectional identities of participants while building a cohesive community, programmatic modifications are planned for the second symposium. One modification will be to incorporate the pedagogical tool of caucusing, in which participants suggest the social identities they wished to caucus around (e.g., Black, Spanish-speaking, first-generation). This allows participants (and panelists) an opportunity to gather in affinity groups of self-identified salient identities, serving to enhance and support communication, while building the capacity to understand their own identities and thereby build authentic relationships across identities.
Margherio, C., & Carrigan, C., & Yen, J., & Horner-Devine, M. C., & Riskin, E. A., & Ivy, J., & Grant, C. S. (2019, April), Building Community Through Professional Development: The LATTICE Program Paper presented at 2019 CoNECD - The Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity , Crystal City, Virginia. 10.18260/1-2--31746
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