TY - JOUR
T1 - Seed Grants of Change
T2 - Building Thriving Networks among Female Geotechnical Faculty Members
AU - Bhatia, Shobha K.
AU - Cumberland, Cameron R.
AU - Gallagher, Patricia
AU - Athanasopoulos-Zekkos, Adda
AU - Soundarajan, Sucheta
N1 - Funding Information:
All 20 PIs were geotechnical faculty at a US institution: 15 female (75%) and 5 male (25%). A majority of PIs (65%) were assistant professors, 15% were associate professors, and 20% were professors. Proposals were evaluated by two reviewers who suggested changes to PIs for modification or clarification before approval. Proposals were submitted by 20 teams and went through several rounds of revisions, with all 20 receiving funding from the GTWF project. Grants were made to PIs from 17 institutions in the US, with 3 institutions receiving 2 grants each. The 20 administered seed grants involved 45 faculty working across 27 universities. Primary awardees collaborated with an additional 10 universities across the country (Fig. 3), including one overseas (Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai). Of all collaborators, 27 were female and 18 were male.
Funding Information:
In the assessment stage, the impact that seed grant awards for collaborative research projects have on geotechnical (GT) faculty was examined by interviewing and analyzing the 20 geotechnical faculty who served as PIs on project proposals funded through this award. Analysis identified four major themes in participants’ interviews: (1) identifying collaboration and collaborators, (2) connecting through networking or relationships, (3) mentoring colleagues and students, and (4) overall benefits. Theme 1: Collaboration. Contemporary academia, and the so-called knowledge economy more broadly, emphasizes and requires collaborative achievement more than individual merit-based work (Leibowitz et al. 2017; Misra et al. 2017). Two main subthemes related to collaboration were identified through interviews: (1) Purpose and meaning of collaboration; and (2) rationale for selecting collaborators.
Funding Information:
Since 1989, female faculty in geotechnical engineering in particular have engaged the NSF to both support and promote female faculty. The first workshop was held in Washington, DC, in 1989 (Bhatia 1989; Gallagher et al. 2018), and the second was held in 2003, adjacent to the United States Universities Consortium on Geotechnical Education and Research (USUCGER) workshop (Alestalo et al. 2015). In 2012, a collaborative venture involving female geotechnical faculty spearheaded a project, supported by a NSF ADVANCE grant at the University of Michigan, that aimed to connect geotechnical female faculty through the creation of a networked hub website, GeoWorld, alongside yearly so-called e-conferences. The project experienced short-term success, but ultimately the network ties were not strong enough to overcome the weight of quotidian demands for time, and the hub fell into disuse. Gallagher et al. (2018), in reviewing the results of the project, concluded that “the many time-constraints that women experience trumped the short-term investment in setting up online networking and thus the long-term value went unrealized.” Similar attempts have been made in sister subfields within engineering to increase faculty retention and gender parity. In the geosciences, the Earth Science Women’s Network (ESWN), “a grassroots, member-driven organization, dedicated to moving the geosciences forward,” was started in 2002, creating a personal and professional network of women in the geosciences. The project supports undergraduates up through senior faculty, and in 2017 it received a NSF grant to launch the ADVANCEGeo program to combat sexual harassment and exclusionary behavior in the geosciences through bystander training.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
PY - 2021/7/1
Y1 - 2021/7/1
N2 - The Geotechnical Women Faculty (GTWF) project has aimed since its inception in 2016 to promote gender parity among faculty within the subfield of geotechnical engineering and to increase the quality and number of connections among current faculty. This paper is a case study of one element of the GTWF project that offered seed grants to gender-diverse faculty groups to foster networking, collaborative, and mentoring relationships. Seed grants were evaluated through participants' final reports and interviews conducted by GTWF project researchers. Content analysis was performed on the interview data using two different coding methods, manual and quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) Miner, which were used together to identify key themes. The effectiveness of this project's seed grants were judged through qualitative assessment, a novel approach among the existing literature on seed grant programs. The study's findings demonstrate the effectiveness of small grant funding in promoting collaboration and mentoring among junior faculty and leading to greater reported levels of confidence and self-efficacy. Seed grant recipients experienced financial success, with approximately 50% of seed grant projects obtaining additional grant funding.
AB - The Geotechnical Women Faculty (GTWF) project has aimed since its inception in 2016 to promote gender parity among faculty within the subfield of geotechnical engineering and to increase the quality and number of connections among current faculty. This paper is a case study of one element of the GTWF project that offered seed grants to gender-diverse faculty groups to foster networking, collaborative, and mentoring relationships. Seed grants were evaluated through participants' final reports and interviews conducted by GTWF project researchers. Content analysis was performed on the interview data using two different coding methods, manual and quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) Miner, which were used together to identify key themes. The effectiveness of this project's seed grants were judged through qualitative assessment, a novel approach among the existing literature on seed grant programs. The study's findings demonstrate the effectiveness of small grant funding in promoting collaboration and mentoring among junior faculty and leading to greater reported levels of confidence and self-efficacy. Seed grant recipients experienced financial success, with approximately 50% of seed grant projects obtaining additional grant funding.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85100906736&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85100906736&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1061/(ASCE)EI.2643-9115.0000039
DO - 10.1061/(ASCE)EI.2643-9115.0000039
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85100906736
SN - 2643-9107
VL - 147
JO - Journal of Civil Engineering Education
JF - Journal of Civil Engineering Education
IS - 3
M1 - 04021011
ER -