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Advocates and Allies (A&A) programs, designed to educate individuals from demographic majority groups to become more centrally involved in equality endeavors, have been introduced to more than twenty U.S higher education institutions with the support of NSF ADVANCE grant funding. Most evaluations of the impact of these programs have been through indirect measures, such as self-reports of satisfaction with the training. We analyzed data across five years and several iterations of A&A workshops at a research-active, public Midwestern, predominantly White, STEM-dominant university to determine changes in participants’ perceptions of equity at the institution. Results suggest that participants left the workshops with more perceptions of local inequity at the institution than they reported before the workshop. Effects were found for both perceptions of racial equity and perceptions of gender equity but were stronger and more consistent for the latter. The effects of the workshops varied across time. Implications of the results for scholarship and practice for the improvement of advocacy programs are discussed. 

Abstract While formal early career mentoring is considered significant for faculty success, few universities have instituted programmatic mid‐career mentoring. We review the reasons mid‐career mentoring is important especially for under‐represented (URM) faculty and consider the ways the entrenched model of one‐on‐one mentoring can fail URM faculty. We advocate for a feminist‐inspired peer mentoring approach using a Community of Practice model that supports mentoring as advocacy. We then describe how our own mid‐career mentoring program enacts this approach and offer lessons learned that include the need to make a cost‐analysis case.