ADVANCE

ADVANCE
Name	ADVANCE
Formation	2001
Type	Nonprofit program
Headquarters	Washington, D.C.
Fields	Diversity, STEM, Higher education
Leader title	Director
Leader name	Dr. Elizabeth Carter

ADVANCE

ADVANCE is a U.S.-based program established to increase participation and advancement of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It supports institutional transformation through research, leadership training, and policy innovation linked to major universities, national laboratories, and professional societies. ADVANCE collaborates with a broad array of stakeholders including federal agencies, academic consortia, and philanthropic organizations to implement systemic change across higher education and research institutions.

Overview

ADVANCE operates as a national initiative connecting major institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, and California Institute of Technology with federal funders including National Science Foundation and national laboratories like Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The program emphasizes institutional transformation models used at places such as University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Pennsylvania State University, University of Washington, and University of Colorado Boulder. ADVANCE projects often engage professional associations including American Association for the Advancement of Science, Association of American Universities, Society for Women Engineers, American Physical Society, and American Chemical Society.

History

ADVANCE was launched in the early 2000s following policy discussions involving National Research Council reports, congressional hearings, and advisory input from leaders at National Institutes of Health, Office of Science and Technology Policy, and foundations like John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Early awardees included institutions such as University of Maryland, University of Virginia, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Rutgers University, and Duke University, which implemented mentoring, tenure review, and climate assessment interventions. Over successive funding cycles ADVANCE broadened to support alliance-based models exemplified by coalitions including University of California, California State University, and City University of New York, and to engage historically black colleges and universities like Howard University and Spelman College as well as Hispanic-serving institutions such as University of Texas at El Paso and Florida International University.

Objectives and Functions

ADVANCE aims to change institutional structures at universities and laboratories to reduce barriers to advancement for women faculty and researchers. Core objectives align with evaluation frameworks used by Institute of Education Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University, Columbia University, and University of Chicago social scientists studying leadership, climate, and organizational behavior. Functions include conducting large-scale climate surveys modeled after tools used by National Center for Education Statistics; developing leadership curricula comparable to programs at Harvard Kennedy School, Wharton School, and Kellogg School of Management; and implementing policy changes in hiring, promotion, and workload distribution that mirror reforms advocated by American Council on Education and Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.

Programs and Initiatives

ADVANCE funds institutional transformation grants, pairwise partnerships, and networked alliances with examples such as the ADVANCE IT (Institutional Transformation) awards at universities like Iowa State University and Northwestern University, and the ADVANCE Partnership grants forming consortia of institutions similar to collaborations seen in Big Ten Academic Alliance and Ivy League cooperative initiatives. Initiatives include leadership workshops drawing on practices from Rotman School of Management and London Business School, mentoring programs similar to efforts at Sigma Xi and Association for Women in Science, and data-driven projects using analytics approaches from Institute for Research on Innovation and Science. ADVANCE also sponsors conferences and seminars linking practitioners from Society for Research in Higher Education, European Molecular Biology Organization, and National Postdoctoral Association.

Impact and Evaluation

Scholarly assessments of ADVANCE draw on methodologies employed by researchers at Princeton University, Yale University, University of California, San Diego, University of Texas at Austin, and Ohio State University to measure changes in hiring rates, promotion trajectories, retention, and climate indices. Published studies in venues analogous to journals of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science, Nature, and field journals report mixed results: improvements in leadership representation at institutions like Arizona State University and University of Nebraska–Lincoln but persistent disparities in some disciplines such as physics, mathematics, and engineering represented by faculty at Caltech and Cornell University. Evaluations reference benchmarking data from sources such as National Science Board reports, longitudinal datasets from Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, and analyses by policy centers at Brookings Institution and Urban Institute.

Funding and Partnerships

Primary funding for ADVANCE has come from the National Science Foundation with supplemental support and partnerships from entities including Smithsonian Institution, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Gates Foundation, and corporate partners in technology and industry alliances such as Intel Corporation, IBM, Microsoft, and Boeing. Program partners include consortia of universities and professional societies like American Institute of Physics and Association for Computing Machinery, as well as international collaborators tied to organizations such as European Research Council and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Funding mechanisms combine competitive grants, cooperative agreements, and institutional matching funds modeled on cooperative research frameworks used by National Institutes of Health and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Category:Programs supporting women in STEM