A major national goal is strengthening the biological and behavioral science and engineering workforce by increasing women and minorities (URMs), who are underrepresented (Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans). These groups must pass through educational institutions in order to join the scientific workforce, so benchmark data on their status in corresponding academic departments is one key to diversifying these professions. There are many data available on underrepresented groups among science and engineering students, but little about the corresponding faculty. This project will collect faculty headcount, disaggregated by race, ethnicity, gender, rank, and discipline, from chairs at top 100 departments in each of 15 pertinent disciplines, as ranked by NSF research funding expenditures. The increasingly interdisciplinary nature of biological and behavioral science and engineering necessitates scrutiny of several disciplines in order to assess well the status of this field. Top 100 universities produce most of the leaders in these disciplines, so these data will help analyze the academic environments which spawn future women and URM leaders in the field. Analyzing these data will reveal the presence and location of barriers for underrepresented groups in the biological and behavioral science and engineering pipeline. This will (1) establish the current representation of women and URMs among tenured and tenure track faculty in top 100 departments of 15 science and engineering disciplines, (2) establish the rate of change in the representations of women and URMs over time, (3) compare the representation of women and URMs among professors versus among BS students, in order to determine the supply of role models and mentors who have had life experiences similar to those students, and (4) compare the representation of women and URMs among assistant professors versus among recent PhD recipients, in order to reveal their utilization in recent hiring. Such data are essential to identifying the locations of pipeline barriers for women and URMs and the relative magnitudes of those barriers across disciplines. These data will enable focusing limited resources, such as funding and time, at those points in academia which have the greatest need and/or chances of success, when designing programs to increase women and URMs in disciplines in which biological and behavioral scientists and/or engineers are based. Populations will enable groups present even in tiny numbers, such as URM female faculty, to be accurately and precisely quantified. Results will be disseminated widely by a variety of means, including peer-reviewed publications, presentations, web posting alongside those from previous surveys (http://cheminfo.chem.ou.edu/~djn/diversity/briefings/Diversity%20Report%20Final.pdf), and networking with individuals, academic groups, funding agencies, and professional organizations. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Due to their increasing interdisciplinary nature, strengthening biological and behavioral science and engineering by increasing women and underrepresented minorities necessitates scrutiny of several disciplines, in order to assess well the status of the fields. This project will collect faculty headcount, disaggregated by race, ethnicity, gender, rank, and discipline, from chairs at top 100 departments in each discipline, as ranked by NSF research funding expenditures. These data will enable focusing limited resources, such as funding and time, at those points in academia which have the greatest need and/or chances of success, when designing programs to increase women and URMs in disciplines in which biological and behavioral scientists and/or engineers are based.

R01GM088614

2009-09-30

2015-08-31