By Sasha Narinesingh
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded the FIU ADVANCE team at the Office to Advance Women, Equity & Diversity (AWED) a $ 50,000 award for their work to improve gender diversity, particularly in its biomedical and behavioral science Departments within the university.
This is the first time the NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) is awarding the Prize for Enhancing Faculty Gender Diversity to reward universities whose biomedical and behavioral departments have shown consistent advances in gender diversity. The award recognizes and recognizes transformative strategies, initiatives and practices by institutions that have successfully increased and maintained gender diversity. The FIU was one of only 10 organizations recognized by the ORWH.
FIU ADVANCE, which is part of the AWED, has a variety of initiatives aimed at promoting gender equality in faculties. Some of the programs that have helped bring the FIU to the top are the ADVANCE Florida Network (AFN), which offers mentoring, networking, collaboration and career opportunities for MINT women with permanent positions and tenure tracks ; STRIDE (strategies and tactics for recruiting to increase diversity and excellence); and Women Faculty Leadership Institute (WFLI).
In these programs, AWED promotes best practices to increase employee engagement and a sense of belonging to the university. Some of the best practices that have made AWED successful and recognized require a statement of diversity in applications, fair evaluation by setting up and using a column of job-related criteria, and ensuring that interviewers consider all candidates valuable Scientists rather than representing their demographic group.
“We are very proud to be recognized for our work promoting gender diversity,” said Caroline Simpson, AWED Associate Director, Equity Advisor and Professor at the College of Arts, Sciences & Education. “Our work is in line with the goals of the FIU to be a diverse, supportive and integrative place where everyone has the opportunity to be successful.
“Increasing faculty diversity opens up more prospects and has a long-term positive impact on academic success,” added Simpson, highlighting AWED’s broader faculty diversity initiatives, such as the Mentor Professors Program, which recently welcomed five new mentor professors this fall semester.
The FIU ADVANCE team will use the funds from the award to continue offering its Bystander Leadership Program to instructors who have not yet had the opportunity to participate. This program aims to reduce gender and ethnic bias and increase inclusion among faculties. Earlier this year, the team was specifically recognized for the Bystander Leadership Program, which became the winner of the 2020 Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Platinum Award in the Best Practices in Diversity Programming category, the most prestigious CASE award.
“We at AWED are incredibly grateful to have received these national recognitions for our integrative excellence programs and achievements,” said Suzanna Rose, Vice Probst, Co-Research Director and Senior Researcher at FIU ADVANCE. “We hope it will encourage other universities to consider the bystander leadership program.”
On October 5th, ORWH will host a forum entitled “Effective Approaches to Fostering Faculty Gender Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Celebrating Progress,” in which the winning institutions will be formally recognized and their effective, evidence-based practices shared around gender diversity and -Improve faculty equity.
Click here to register for the forum.
source https://www.bisayanews.com/2021/09/17/nih-awards-fiu-advance-for-enhancing-faculty-gender-diversity-in-the-sciences-fiu-news/
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