UC Merced welcomed Beth Mitchneck, vice provost for Faculty Success at University of Massachusetts, Lowell, as part of Chancellor’s Dialogue on Diversity and Interdisciplinarity series last week.
Mitchneck presented “Institutional Change for Equality: A Recipe for Change,” which provided a framework for institutional transformation to help universities become more gender equitable.
“This is not something we can accomplish overnight,” Mitchneck said to an audience of faculty, staff and students at UC Merced. “This is something that involves everyone in this room and everyone outside of this room.
“It’s a long haul. There are really no quick fixes. It’s long and it’s tiring and it’s worth what we are passionate about. We are running a marathon.”
Mitchneck introduced a six-step “recipe” to help universities devise a plan to encourage gender equitability. Tips such as ensuring a social scientist is on a change committee and focusing on promoting change at the department level were part of the process Mitchneck outlined.
The framework is the focus of a journal Mitchneck co-authored entitled “Recipe for Change: Creating a More Inclusive Academy, ” which reviews the literature on institutional change to promote faculty diversity. They propose essential features necessary for successful change and a more diverse workforce.
Mitchneck has a dual research focus on gender equity in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), as well as migration and displaced populations with an emphasis on countries of former Georgia and Ukraine. Mitchneck, also a former lead program officer for the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE program, drew upon her own experience managing gender equity programs to highlight the importance of shared networks for achieving equity goals.
She has published numerous articles in the popular press about her research and gender issues in venues such as Science, Foreign Affairs online, The Hill, and U.S. News & World Report, and is quoted in numerous articles about gender equity in STEM.
