An office at Wichita State dedicated to faculty development is left in limbo after a $1 million federal grant was canceled.
Faculty members said the grant from the National Science Foundation — aimed at promoting gender equity in science, technology, engineering and math — was one of the many cuts to come out of the federal government’s efforts to limit spending and eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“And so now we have all these plans that we had going, and we have to stop them,” Janet Twomey, a WSU engineering professor and director of the office of FARE, said.
The grant was titled Organizational Change for Gender Equity in STEM Academic Professions (ADVANCE).
“NSF established it in order to increase the number of female faculty in STEM departments across the nation because they recognized that there was a growing number of female Ph. D. graduates in STEM fields, but they weren’t going on to faculty positions or they weren’t getting promoted and retained in their faculty positions,” Moriah Beck, a chemistry and biochemistry professor, said. “They wanted to find ways to promote and find and allow individual institutions to figure out, ‘What are the road blocks and barriers at their institution that are preventing women from getting hired, being retained and getting promoted?’”
Twomey and Beck both said that lacking a sense of belonging is one of the main obstacles preventing more women from entering or staying in STEM faculty positions. Twomey said this carries down to students as well.
“For example, I’m the only (female) full professor in engineering,” Twomey said. “I’ve been here a long time, and women don’t last long … Students want to see people like themselves. So if you come into an engineering class, for example, you might see one other woman and the professors are mostly male, and you sit there and you go, ‘I don’t know if this is for me.’”
Beck said that FARE has used money from NSF to study hiring, retention and promotions of faculty at WSU and has hosted training on how to diversify faculty.
According to Twomey, WSU is pulling some of its funding for the office too.
Faculty research
Twomey said that the loss of the grant hurts more than FARE’s equity initiatives.
“What we’re trying to do is to increase the diversity of our faculty,” Twomey said. “And you know, there’s a little bit of DEI in it, but a lot of it is helping all faculty be successful, and that means that whatever we do for women and minorities, especially in STEM, we offer it to everyone … This current (U.S. presidential) administration is politicizing science because we are doing research in this grant, too.”
FARE was using the money to fund its Mutual Mentoring Grant, which allows faculty to collaborate on research projects. Beck said this was the next step after focusing on hiring and is aimed at promoting retention.
“It’s kind of the idea of, you know, the rising tide raises all boats,” she said. “So we were going to help female faculty, but we were also going to be not just focused on that.”
On Tuesday, faculty gathered to hear presentations on that research amid uncertainty about its ability to continue.
The projects include faculty from a variety of disciplines researching topics such as neuroimaging, the use of artificial intelligence in inspecting power grids and health care education.
Twomey said the office was left “scrambling for new funding” for the Mutual Mentorship grants.
FARE is pursuing other funding opportunities, such as getting the Mutual Mentoring projects funded through the academic colleges, but Twomey and Beck said it is unlikely to get much funding from within the university due to its recent budget shortfall.
Twomey said that she and other faculty have been working to make FARE and its initiatives a reality for about 10 years, all with the goal of helping faculty feel that they belong and are supported.
“It’s like, you know, you finally get something going here, and it’s gone,” she said.
