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Universities were established as hierarchical bureaucracies that reward individual attainment in evaluating success. Yet collaboration is crucial both to 21st century science and, we argue, to advancing equity for women academic scientists. We draw from research on gender equity and on collaboration in higher education, and report on data collected on one campus. Sixteen focus group meetings were held with 85 faculty members from STEM departments, separated by faculty rank and gender (i.e., assistant professor men, full professor women). Participants were asked structured questions about the role of collaboration in research, career development, and departmental decision-making. Inductive analyses of focus group data led to the development of a theoretical model in which resources, recognition, and relationships create conditions under which collaboration is likely to produce more gender equitable outcomes for STEM faculty. Ensuring women faculty have equal access to resources is central to safeguarding their success; relationships, including mutual mentoring, inclusion and collegiality, facilitate women’s careers in academia; and recognition of collaborative work bolsters women’s professional advancement. We further propose that gender equity will be stronger in STEM where resources, relationships, and recognition intersect—having multiplicative rather than additive effects. Keywords: collaboration; gender equity; academic STEM careers 

This report details how universities can pair the work of STEM Education Centers and Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) to improve teaching and student success in STEM fields. The Collaborating at the Center report, written by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the POD Network in Higher Education, presents key recommendations on ways these two distinct types of campus-based centers can work more closely to further national STEM education improvement efforts. The report is based on some of the key findings of 46 leaders from SECs and CTLs who gathered at a November 2015 workshop that APLU, the POD Network, and the Network of STEM Education Centers (NSEC) convened with support from the National Science Foundation. The workshop was designed to introduce these communities to each other, discuss areas of synergy, and explore ways that these communities could most effectively collaborate to improve student success on their campuses and nationally as networks. Some of the key recommendations from the report include: -Approach cross-unit collaborations by inviting everyone to the table, creating relevant leadership groups, and keeping stakeholders informed. -Map the "territory of collaboration": identify common elements of mission, differentiated strategies, shared goals, strengths, stakeholders, expertise, resources, roles for each center, and benefits from participating in shared projects. -Acknowledge stretched staffing and resources by articulating different possible modes of collaborating at various levels of commitment and normalizing different responses as helpful and not damaging to the centers' relationship. -Record progress and make success visible.