For immediate release: August 22, 2003
For more information, contact Susan Griffith at 216-368-1004 or susan.griffith@case.edu

CLEVELAND—Case Western Reserve University will receive a prestigious five-year, $3.5 million National Science Foundation ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Award to implement a plan to promote women in science and engineering and to enhance the culture at the university.

The program involves collaborations with Lubrizol Corp. and Fisk University to build a workplace environment from an innovative "blueprint" that will become a national model, called Academic Careers in Engineering and Science (ACES), for how research universities can recruit and retain women scientists and engineers.

"The ADVANCE award enables the university to employ a range of incentives and resources to stimulate university-wide change," says Lynn Singer, Case deputy provost, vice president of academic affairs and Case's ADVANCE project director.

She adds that the award provides Case with an opportunity to examine ways to make the campus a family-friendly environment where women and men can have a career and family life.
ACES co-directors are Mary Barkley, professor of chemistry from the College of Arts and Sciences; Diana Bilimoria, associate professor of organizational behavior from the Weatherhead School of Management; and John Angus, professor of chemical engineering from the Case School of Engineering.

"Institutional change requires the hearts and minds of everyone in the organization. It must really be a mindset for change," says Bilimoria.

Because the academic environment fosters autonomous and independent thinking, Bilimoria says ACES has targeted multiple levels for institutional changes in its blueprint.

The project's leaders stress that transformation of the workplace for women will have a domino effect and change the workplace for all faculty, staff and students.

"ACES gives us a chance to address a real problem with resources to provide a realistic solution," says Angus.

ACES' goal is to increase women faculty in the sciences and engineering by 20 percent in the next five years. Attracting and keeping women in the sciences is a national concern. Past national NSF efforts focused on recruitment but fell short in meeting the projected increases for women.
"If we are to create the world's most powerful learning environment, then all individuals at the University must be able to reach their full potential. We cannot grow without the participation of everyone at the university," said Case President Edward M. Hundert.

For the past five years, the number of women scientists at Case has remained at 22 percent of the faculty. Women students comprise 37 percent of enrollment; the national average is 55 percent.

The ACES plan

The two-phase plan impacts 29 departments across campus and entails cooperation from all levels of Case's leadership.

Hundert is committed to seeking support for five endowed professorships to attract senior women faculty in science and engineering and to monitor progress with the University's schools and departments in their plans to professionally develop and bring women to campus. The commitment for the chairs totals more than $10 million.

ACES annually will fund 10 distinguished lectureships for visiting women scientists and engineers. These lecturers will be on campus for one to two weeks and interact with faculty and students and give numerous lectures.

In Phase I—the first two years of the project—four test departments will undergo intensive change. The deans, associate deans, department chairs and women faculty in the departments of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, mechanical and aerospace engineering in the Case School of Engineering, physiology and biophysics in the Case School of Medicine and organizational behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management, will receive coaching to set goals and to map out action plans.

Barkley said these departments were selected because of the opportunity to improve representation of women in those departments, the availability of women graduates in the fields, the projected faculty openings in the next two years and a willingness by the department and school leadership to undertake the process of setting goals and making changes.

In the test departments, all women faculty members will have a three-member mentoring team comprised of a senior department faculty member, an external mentor from the faculty member's field and a senior faculty member from a related department at Case to help the faculty member develop her career.

Studies over the past three decades have shown that students place exceptional demands and expectations upon women in the sciences and have conscious or underlying biases, says Singer. All incoming undergraduate and graduate students will attend training to overcome preconceived stereotypes and make them more sensitive to women in the workplace.

In Phase II, the piloted coaching and mentoring will be expanded to other departments.
Over the next five years, ACES will work closely with Case's Center for Women in a variety of activities and workshops that professionally advance women. The University plans to network with Lubrizol Corp., which successfully implemented practices to transform the $1.8 billion, Cleveland-based company.

Case will strengthen its collaboration with Fisk University by inviting members of Fisk's faculty as ADVANCE visiting professors to interact with the women faculty at Case to build a pipeline of minority students and faculty. Case also will piggyback on two successful summer research programs for minorities and establish another program to expand opportunities for minority students to engage in research.

The program will continue to utilize the Weatherhead School of Management's organizational behavior faculty who are national leaders in understanding how organizations work.

"This project will make a difference in the academic lives of all faculty," says Singer. "Findings from the program will inform other universities about how to tackle the problem of the leaky academic pipeline, which leads to the loss of talented women faculty in science and engineering."

–Case–

 

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