The ADVANCE Associates Program: An Intervention for Retaining Women Faculty Members in STEM

The Associates Program was implemented as part of an ADVANCE Institutional Transformation award from NSF intended to address difficulty recruiting and retaining women faculty members in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields at a university emphasizing undergraduate education. At the end of the grant period, it was found that ADVANCE Associates were retained at a higher rate than general STEM faculty (91% versus 69%). The current study sought to examine why this was the case and what made participating faculty more likely to stay at the institution. Focus groups with former associates, coded using a grounded-theory approach to analyses, revealed participants in the program reported reduced isolation and a greater willingness to advocate for gender equity, which they linked to participation in the program.