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The route to tenure is often clear and well-defined, while the path to full professor is notoriously described as ambiguous and elusive, which raises questions and uncertainty on how to be promoted. In order to explore institutional concerns expressed by associate professor women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and social and behavioral sciences (SBS) regarding the pathway to full professor, interviews were conducted with members of the Belayers Network at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). The Belayers Network consists of STEM and SBS associate professor women and is designed to support their promotion to full professor through opportunities to come together for informational, tangible, and emotional resources. An instrumental case study with a pragmatic theoretical lens was employed for this study. Interviews were analyzed inductively and resulted in five themes: (1) Full professor promotion criteria are ambiguous; (2) Teaching and service expectations are too high; (3) Lack of research collaborators inhibits scholarly output; (4) Scarce research-related resources are a persistent struggle; and (5) Mentoring and support are absent. The academy may find it instructive to understand better associate professor women’s institutional concerns about the pathway to full professor and possible ways to offset the obstacles toward achievement. Additionally, pragmatic solutions and implications are offered to mitigate these concerns in the context of UCCS. This research is sponsored by a National Science Foundation ADVANCE Adaptation Award. 

Grant funding is essential to the advancement of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields with certain grants viewed as especially prestigious and career formative. The goal of this project was twofold: first to describe the gender demographics of the national winners of two prestigious grants and second, to document the impact of an educational program aimed at improving the success for women in STEM fields in a local setting. In Study 1, we analyzed publicly available national data to document gender gaps in National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) and National Institutes of Health’s K01 awards from 2008-2021. Results showed that, while the ratio of K01 awards favored women, the ratio of men-to-women CAREER awardees favored men. In Study 2, we implemented a grant-writing program for CAREER awards based in self-determination theory at one university and analyzed its impact on funding success. Results comparing before the educational program and after showed that the average annual success rate increased for everyone from 11% to 33%. Women-identified faculty who participated in the program were awarded CAREER funding at a higher rate than would be expected from the number of women eligible to apply or submission rates. While the correlational and observational nature of this study make it impossible to conclude that it was only the educational programs that resulted in the benefits to women’s award success, we encourage other universities to consider adapting the program and enable faculty development around grant success.