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1. Increasing STEM Belonging and Building Social Capital for Faculty and Student Success

   https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v97i2.1115  

   Moats, Ella; Darrah, Marjorie; Humbert, Roxanne (April 2025, Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science)

   While many institutions are focusing on increasing STEM belonging for students, we argue that supporting faculty will increase STEM belonging and build social capital, which is vital for career growth and collaboration, creating stability for student success. Faculty at small and large institutions may struggle to find a community of STEM professionals where they feel they belong. Faculty members may struggle with the lack of connections to others in their field and miss out on support that helps them succeed in their careers. When faculty lack support, they may even leave an institution because of failure to get promotion or tenure. This in turn causes problems for students relying on the faculty for guidance and identity. We contend that the improvement science initiatives and other activities of the First2 Network, an NSF funded project, build connections in the STEM community in WV, help STEM students persist in their given field and build STEM belonging and social capital for the faculty members involved. Thus, providing a more stable environment for students to flourish. We surveyed faculty and found that the First2 Network had a positive influence on faculty members’ STEM Belonging, and on their development of social capital to further their academic careers. The faculty also provided examples of how their participation in improvement science work has contributed to their professional growth and benefited students at their institution. 

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2. Negotiating mentoring relationships and support for Black and Brown early‐career faculty

   https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21755  

   King, Natalie S.; Upadhyay, Bhaskar (September 2022, Science Education)

   In this essay, we share historical and structural components of mentoring within institutions of higher education and grapple with technical and moral obligations of support. We argue for more humanizing approaches that embed personal, social, and cultural aspects of mentoring, and seek to disrupt the purposes of mentoring, and for whom? Using a critical approach, we promote justice-oriented and equity-driven models of mentoring that account for excessive teaching loads and service commitments for faculty at minority-serving institutions and Black and Brown faculty at predominantly White institutions. Current promotion and tenure publish or perish models neglect the intellectual and scholarly contributions made through teaching and service and therefore hold the same level of expectations for engagement in and dissemination of research. We share our own stories as Faculty of Color navigating institutional structures during the promotion and tenure process, while also negotiating incongruent cultures of our personal and professional lives. Furthermore, we address the need for mentoring and networking within exclusionary spaces to support the productivity and critical research agendas of Black and Brown faculty that often challenge the white heteronormative cultures of our institutions, professional organizations, peer-reviewed journals, and prestigious funding mechanisms. Implications of this essay include an acknowledgment of oppressive systems that early-career Black and Brown faculty often navigate and a call for diverse mentoring programs and supports that conform with and validate our lives and needs. Furthermore, we provide recommendations on evidence-based resources and approaches that are available to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics faculty and science educators. 

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3. Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century: Increasing Diversity and Community Participation to Achieve Environmental and Social Justice

   https://doi.org/10.1089/ees.2020.0148  

   Montoya, Lupita D.; Mendoza, Lorelay M.; Prouty, Christine; Trotz, Maya; Verbyla, Matthew E. (November 2020, Environmental Engineering Science)

   null (Ed.)

   Communities of color are disproportionately burdened by environmental pollution and by obstacles to influence policies that impact environmental health. Black, Hispanic, and Native American students and faculty are also largely underrepresented in environmental engineering programs in the United States. Nearly 80 participants of a workshop at the 2019 Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) Research and Education Conference developed recommendations for reversing these trends. Workshop participants identified factors for success in academia, which included adopting a broader definition for the impact of research and teaching. Participants also supported the use of community-based participatory research and classroom action research methods in engineering programs for recruiting, retaining, and supporting the transition of underrepresented students into professional and academic careers. However, institutions must also evolve to recognize the academic value of community-based work to enable faculty, especially underrepresented minority faculty, who use it effectively, to succeed in tenure promotions. Workshop discussions elucidated potential causal relationships between factors that influence the co-creation of research related to academic skills, community skills, mutual trust, and shared knowledge. Based on the discussions from this workshop, we propose a pathway for increasing diversity and community participation in the environmental engineering discipline by exposing students to community-based participatory methods, establishing action research groups for faculty, broadening the definition of research impact to improve tenure promotion experiences for minority faculty, and using a mixed methods approach to evaluate its impact. 

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4. An Intervention to Increase Belonging and Support Retention for Faculty of Color and Women Faculty

   https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.70009  

   Mallett, Robyn K; Naqi‐Hasnain, Zahra; Garbarski, Dana; Li‐Grining, Christine; Ensminger, David C; Tangarife, Walter; Ahad, Badia (June 2025, Journal of Social Issues)

   ABSTRACT Faculty of Color and women faculty face significant obstacles (e.g., isolation, marginalization, tokenism) on the road to tenure and promotion. We translate social psychological research on the contact hypothesis and belonging and adapt previous interventions at other universities to deliver an institutional‐level intervention designed to support faculty belonging and retention. This study utilizes a faculty climate survey and institutional‐level demographic data to assess tenure‐track faculty belonging and retention following the intervention. We observe greater perceptions of institutional support for diversity and lesser disparities in belonging and tenure rates among historically marginalized faculty over three years following the intervention. We discuss how social psychologists may help translate basic research into institutional interventions that promote racial justice and equity. Our work illustrates the potential for targeted initiatives to reduce disparities and promote equity and representation in academia, ultimately benefiting both faculty and students. 

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5. Developing a System to Support the Advancement of Women in Higher Education

   Bartels, Lynn K; Weissinger, Sandra E.; O’Brien, Leah C.; Ball, Jamie C.; Cobb, P. Denise; Harris, Jessica; Morgan, Susan M.; Love, Emily; Moody, Sierra B.; Feldmann, Matthew L. (January 2021, The journal of faculty development)

   Female faculty in higher education face challenges in promotion and are more likely to leave academia than male faculty. Faculty development can play an important role in changing the institutional system within which female faculty work to help support their promotion and retention, which, in turn, can lead to more diverse and equitable systems for supporting a diverse student body. This paper identifies professional development for three groups. One, senior faculty, especially white male faculty, can be trained to be advocates and allies for female faculty by learning how to identify and intervene when discriminatory behaviors occur. Two, department chairs play a key role in creating an equitable and supportive departmental climate for all faculty. Despite their important role, department chairs often receive minimal training. Workshops on family-friendly benefits can help them support their faculty when family issues affect their ability to do their faculty jobs. Finally, promotion and tenure committees are asked to review faculty achievements and make recommendations about whether faculty members have earned promotion and/or tenure. Their recommendations are critical for faculty retention and promotion. We review several ways that gender bias can be addressed through promotion and tenure committee development activities including workshops, simulations, and interactive theater. 

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