DESPITE WOMEN MAKING UP NEARLY HALF OF THE U.S. WORKFORCE, only about 27 percent of workers in the science, technology, engineering and math fields are female the U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2021.

At TCU, a group of researchers is conducting a self-study of the university to identify systemic factors that impede equity and inclusion of female faculty in STEM disciplines. Faculty Resources and Opportunities for Growth in STEM — or FROG in STEM — aims to produce institutional change that will impact all female faculty at TCU.

The research is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE, a program designed to increase the representation and advancement of women in academic science and engineering careers.

TCU’s application to the ADVANCE program notes the research team’s approach. “Identifying and acknowledging implicit bias toward females, especially women/females of color, is the first step, with suggestions for change being the second step.”

“Receipt of this award will facilitate our institutional goals to increase the representation and advancement of women among our academic science and engineering faculty.”
Floyd Wormley Jr.

The application goes on to add that the group’s intent is not only to increase diversity in STEM programs on campus, but also to bring about a reckoning with factors that perpetuate discrimination.

“Receipt of this award will facilitate our institutional goals to increase the representation and advancement of women among our academic science and engineering faculty and ensure that all our faculty in every discipline are supported and thrive at TCU,” said Floyd Wormley Jr., vice provost for research, dean of graduate studies and coprincipal investigator on the study.

The team of researchers at TCU is gathering data to allow for an objective look at the university’s policies and patterns in recruiting, hiring, promoting and retaining STEM professionals. The research, which began in 2023 and will be completed in late 2025, will also include focus groups and surveys of current faculty members to gain insight into attitudes about the teaching experience at TCU. This data will be used to craft a five-year strategic plan to improve the work experiences of female STEM faculty across TCU and establish targets for institutional change.

Serving as principal investigator is Molly Weinburgh, Piper Professor and Andrews Chair of Mathematics and Science Education; the co-principal investigators are Wormley and Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs.

The research team also includes Francyne Huckaby, associate provost for faculty affairs and professor of curriculum studies; Kayla Green, professor of chemistry and biochemistry; Gabriel Huddleston, associate professor and chair of the department of counseling, societal change and inquiry and director of the Center for Public Education and Community Engagement; and Jessie Farris, a doctoral candidate in science education.

“We are looking at published documents and asking ourselves, are there glass walls, glass ceilings, glass anything?” said Weinburgh, who is also director of TCU’s Andrews Institute for Research in Mathematics & Science Education. “Are there things that are particularly written into our policies that we need to change?”

Jessie DeAro, lead program director of the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE program, emphasized that clearing paths for qualified candidates is not the only focus of the ADVANCE program; gender equity in academic workplaces is the goal.

“Even with more women in STEM, a workplace may still be inequitable and unwelcoming,” DeAro said. “So, an equitable academic workplace means that everyone can contribute and thrive as STEM faculty members in their teaching, service and research no matter their background or identity.”

Nationally, promotion data indicate that female faculty can take years longer than their male counterparts to be promoted to positions such as full professor, Weinburgh said, adding that this lag has salary and leadership consequences.

“Our yearly raise [for professors at TCU] is predicated on our performance reviews, and different departments have different kinds of reviews,” she said. “They can be weighted in ways that help some populations and not others.”

If the rate of research publication is prioritized over hours spent teaching in a particular department, but a faculty member is given a heavier teaching load, Weinburgh said, they are not as capable of achieving a high performance review and its corresponding raise. “We have to account for how people’s work is allocated and how that work is valued.”

The idea builds on transformation already underway at TCU, which in 2021 created a model to address hidden labor, a term referring to work that goes unnoticed, unacknowledged and thus unregulated, and is derivative of the term invisible work coined by sociologist Arlene Daniels. This model has since been approved as a guide for colleges and schools within the university.

“We are looking at published documents and asking ourselves, are there glass walls, glass ceilings, glass anything? Are there things that are particularly written into our policies that we need to change?”
Molly Weinburgh

Through the self-study, Weinburgh said, the team also hopes to identify how the multidimensionality of a person — through unique lived experiences influenced by such characteristics as race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, ability and age — shape complex social inequalities among faculty. Weinburgh said the team is asking itself and the university, “As we’re looking at intersections, are there biases that we may not even realize we have until they’re pointed out?”

Research published in 2020 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal, stated that historically underrepresented groups often connect dots between ideas and concepts that others have missed. The study found that the more underrepresented people are in gender or race in their discipline, the more likely they are to introduce novel connections between ideas.

Job satisfaction influences retention, and Weinburgh said that FROG in STEM is intent on examining factors found to influence job satisfaction among professors, including teaching load, salary gaps, allocation of resources, institutional service activities, lack of mentorship and department-level issues that could include experiences such as discrimination, harassment and microaggressions.

“It’s true that a workplace can be rather equitable but the climate not be comfortable,” Weinburgh said, “and we want lots of different people to love coming to work every day.”