Activities 2003

Leadership Education for Advancement and Promotion
University of Colorado, Boulder ADVANCE Program

Activities 2003

Overview

The scale of the LEAP program is allowing us to develop a much deeper understanding of key issues than was previously possible. This year we have concentrated on clarifying where things currently stand and on identifying strategies for long term institutional change. Models of effective institutional change emphasize the need to work at multiple levels of the organization on multiple aspects of the problem. LEAP therefore has programs aimed at individuals and at the department level, as well as activities promoting changes in policies at the highest levels.

The workshops, while focused on the training of individuals are producing a growing community of people who are realizing that they share a vision of a better CU. We hope to develop an institutional environment at CU within which different styles and different approaches are not only accommodated but also encouraged. LEAP cannot solve directly problems such as "two-career couples", how to care for young children and pursue a tenure track appointment, or how to move from an instructor position. It can provide a framework within which to hold discussions on these issues. It can also help empower people to work on solutions to these problems and help them believe that these are problems that can be solved.

As the program matures it is broadening its reach and growing in influence. The LEAP core group and members of the advisory board are working to formulate specific policy changes and the adoption of practices that promote LEAP’s core goal of changing the environment at CU. These include working on the implementation of a professional code of conduct for faculty, making chairs training compulsory, addressing changes in recruitment practices, and encouraging the centralization of faculty development programs.

Table 1 — LEAP Components

Leadership Workshops

Leadership workshop development has primarily been the responsibility of Patricia Rankin and Mary Ann Shea. We have used Carl Larson and Page Morahan as consultants/facilitators. The leadership workshops have been designed to give people the skills they need to thrive within the institution and an understanding of how the institution works and how it can be changed. We ran both and introductory (pre-tenure) and an advanced (post tenure) leadership workshop in 2003. We are planning to run the introductory workshop twice in 2004 because of increased demand, and to run the advanced workshop once. Based on feedback, we have slightly shortened the workshops from a four and a half day format to a slightly more intensive four-day format.

The four day workshop content is now generally settled. We are, however, still experimenting with the best way to deliver this content. Each session at a workshop has associated with it a specific set of skills that will be worked on. We are also providing material to participants for them to read outside of the sessions and after the workshops so that they can build on their skills. We have continued to accumulate a small library of books on leadership and management, guidance for new faculty, coaching and mentorship, and background materials to loan out to course participants.

We are now getting anecdotal feedback from participants on the direct benefits of attending LEAP workshops. Also, past participants are helping us to recruit new participants. Following the introductory workshop, junior faculty participants met with the Provost for lunch and he has been encouraging them to come to him directly with their issues and concerns. It is clear that it is important to provide a stipend to encourage participation.

This year we experimented with taking a workshop into a department. Two geology faculty meetings were dedicated to the learning the skills associated with collaborative work. The goal was to facilitate the development of a "five-year" plan for the geology department as part of that departments internal review process. The chair of geology (Mary Krauss) participated in our first leadership development workshop in 2002 and is an enthusiastic supporter of LEAP. The feedback from this experiment has been very positive. While we note that having a supportive chair played an important role in the success of this experiment, we want to try this approach in other departments that are less ideal cases in 2004.

We offered an opportunity for a 360° evaluation to participants in the leadership workshops. Only a few people took us up on the offer but those who did found the process useful. We will continue to encourage people to take the time to evaluate their leadership and to learn about their strengths and weaknesses.

Short Workshops/Lecture Series

We have run a series of lectures highlighting gender equity issues. Virginia Valian, Debra Rollinson and Sue Rosser have all given talks sponsored or co-sponsored by LEAP. Virginia’s talk highlighted the research indicating the important role gender schemas play in evaluation. Debra’s talk focused on her arguments in support of applying Title IX to science departments. Sue discussed how the selection of material to study and the approach used can make science education more of less gender neutral. We also ran a series of short workshops on conflict management, communication styles and departmental leadership.

One concern we had coming in to this year was the balance of male and female participation in the workshops. So far we have found that more women are applying than men (for the January 2004 workshop the mix is 12 women and two men). The coaching workshops have involved more men — possibly because we are recruiting senior faculty members and this group is mostly male. The impact of gender balance on the workshops is something we will continue to monitor.

Coaching

The primary goal of the coaching program is to improve the support structure for junior faculty and to help them promote their careers. Many of the participants in the Introductory Leadership workshop later requested to participate in the coaching program.

This year we assigned assistant professors that wanted coaches to coaches trained in 2002 and also ran a four-day coaching workshop in June to train more coaches. We took account of feedback from the first coaches training program to develop a workshop centered on academic case studies. The 2004 workshop will also use case studies heavily but we will be more selective of the case studies used and link the case studies to specific coaching issues and skills.

We are still finding it easier to recruit coaches than people to be coached. We are hoping that the increased visibility of the project will help us with this in 2004. We are also beginning to work more directly with the associate deans to help us identify people who would benefit from the coaching program.

Outreach/Course Development

This is covered under the "Outreach" reporting category.

Benchmarking/Evaluation/Research

The evaluation and research studies funded by this grant are ongoing activities. The overall plans where discussed in some detail in last years report and so will only be updated this year. One of the most important things to happen this year was a visit from Ann Austin (Michigan State) who is acting as an outside evaluator for the project. She had a significant impact in helping us to develop our understanding of the institutional change process and encouraged us to clarify how the individual parts of the project fit together. Table 2 shows the model of institutional change we are working with and how the LEAP program elements fit (in green). The questions in black in the table are the ones that we plan to have answered by the end of the project in ways that make the projects impact clear.

One immediate result of Ann’s visit was the decision to do a climate survey to better benchmark the current status of women. This survey will be repeated towards the projects end. We have also realized that "networking" and LEAP’s role in increasing networking amongst women faculty has arisen as a measure of the projects broader influence — and we are working on ways to measure this by comparing the amount of networking done by the January 2004 workshop participants and the July 2004 participants before they have taken the workshops.

Good progress has been made this year on the pathways study. Over one hundred interviews have been done. This study addresses how women with Ph.D.s in the sciences choose their career plans. The evaluation team (Elaine Seymour, Lianne Pedersen-Gallegos, Kristine DeWelde and Sandra Laursen) has developed a database of information on career decisions/pathways focused on a previously understudied but key group - women in non-tenure track positions. This information should help clarify the pipeline and inform discussions on how to better develop our workforce. While there are no findings yet, preliminary impressions indicate that tenure track careers require a "perfect trajectory" and can be derailed by single life events.

Table 2 —Perspective on Institutional Change

The studies of female faculty in the classroom (Sherie McClam, Margaret Eisenhart) have moved beyond quantitative measures all of which conclude that on the aggregate, or looking at mean ratings, there is no statistically significant difference between the way students rate men and women faculty. Work is now proceeding on a more qualitative study involving in depth interviews with male and female faculty members and post-docs. Sherie plans to complete her dissertation on this work in 2004.

Two important issues have come up concerning the work of the evaluation team and the research studies. First, the small number of female faculty makes it hard to avoid asking people to participate in more than one study. Second, the limited numbers make it challenging to maintain confidentiality and also make the results as useful as possible — for example, how do you deal with a problem raised by a women faculty member that is specific to a particular department but also easily connected to that specific faculty member?

We have continued with the benchmarking of key statistics. Associate Dean Joyce Nielsen, and Robyn Marshke and Elizabeth Sheff, two graduate students, have been responsible for most of the accumulation and analysis of the institutional data. While accumulation of the raw data is relatively straightforward in many cases, the interpretation of the data is not and significant time has gone into understanding and cleaning the data. A paper is in progress discussing how institutions need to track "Vital Variables" in order to fully understand what is going on. This paper will also discuss the roles of quantitative and qualitative analysis in providing a full picture of a given situation.

Robyn’s thesis (planned for summer 2004) will be a discourse study on the topic of the gender gap in earnings in academia. Reviews of literature indicate that various explanations of the gender gap have come and gone over the last 30 years (since about 1970 when attention to issue first started). The hypothesis is that this variety is related to the larger political climate; that there seems to be minimal "progress" regarding the power of these explanations–that is, the research is not cumulative but ebbs and flows. They are considering treating CU as case study. Joyce has an outline of policy and administrative efforts at CU since about 1970s that show a variety of strategies that have been tried to deal with the disparity.

Dissemination

Patricia has given several talks on LEAP to a wide range of audiences including a seminar at Syracuse University and a presentation at the Four Corners meeting of the American Physical Society. She has also talked to members of the Boulder press club, Puksta scholars (a group of CU undergraduates involved in community projects) and graduate students. She has consulted with the faculty development group at the CU-Colorado Springs campus. She is working on a chapter on "networking" for a book designed to be a "handbook for success" for women in academia that should be finished early in 2004. Finally, she has been asked to help with the development of a leadership initiative for women residence hall directors.

Broader Issues/Connections

We are beginning to see the development of informal support networks growing out of LEAP mediated interactions. Issues that previously were considered to be "off the table" are starting to come up in discussion (such as how to make faculty accountable for unprofessional behavior). We now see fostering the growth of these networks as an important part of the LEAP program.

We are working with the graduate teacher program and the graduate school to develop a program that will improve the availability of career development training for post docs. We held a combined talk/discussion group for post docs to get their input on what they would like to see the program offer. One difficulty we are solving is the lack of a basic contact list for post docs — due to the way the job classification scheme works at CU we have to get this list department by department.

We are working on ways to leverage LEAP by connecting with other campus activities. The Boulder Campus Faculty Assembly Committee on Women took the lead in getting the form used by students to evaluate faculty teaching changed. Women and minority faculty, in particular, had complained about this system being used in the past to make inappropriate comments. In 2004 we will be working with the AVC for diversity and student leaders to develop a code of professional conduct for faculty, staff and students. Our goal is to make it clear that it is everyone’s responsibility to ensure a civil environment.

We are encouraging the Business School at CU to study gender equity issues by making Lori Seward an associate on the LEAP project (not NSF funded) and providing her access to our work. She will look into how to adapt any best practices we develop for the business school environment. She is also helping us to develop more in house presenters for leadership topics by providing us with advice on members of the business school faculty who have the skills we need.

This year’s work has highlighted how important the role of department chair is in setting the tone of a department. One of our 2004 initiatives will center around providing improved training for chairs and on ensuring that all chairs take this training. We will partner with a system-wide leadership initiative — The Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) - in the development of the training program. We will work with the AVC for faculty affairs to centralize responsibility for faculty development programs in her office. This will reduce the possibility of duplication, improve the uniformity of information provided to faculty, and make it easier to make chairs participate in the training program.

We have continued to meet with the LEAP advisory board in 2003. This board includes VC Carol Lynch, Georgie Lesh-Laurie (the former chancellor of CU Denver), Dean Todd Gleeson, AVC Bobby Schnabel, Joey White (Chancellor Bynny’s chief of staff), Dean Davis of engineering, AVC Susan Kent (Faculty affairs), Zaneta Johns (Director of Human Resources, CU Boulder) Pat Heim (a consultant to in industry on women in leadership), Barbara McLane (IBM), Joann Joselyn ( Secretary General of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA) and David Bachrach (a consultant to medical schools on bringing women into leadership positions in academic medicine). The advisory board has proved an effective way both to keep the highest levels of the university administration informed and to get support and helpful advice.

The advisory board has encouraged us to proceed with forming a task force to look broadly at the issue of recruiting to pool levels and to formulate policy changes as needed to improve our recruitment of women and minorities. We will bring in outside consultants to help facilitate the work of the task force (and to teach the task force ways to think outside the box).

Budget Comments

The on campus budget office has an agreement with NSF not to resubmit budgets unless there is more than a 30% change. Given this criterion, we do not anticipate having to submit a revised budget to NSF though we would do so if requested. We will be spending more on travel in 2004 than originally planned in order to help disseminate information on what we are doing and on what we have learnt. We will be redirecting the funding allocated to Mary Ann Shea and Carl Larsen to other workshop consultants as we work to broaden what we are offering and produce a more polished product. We have also found it necessary to adjust the number of students involved in outreach activities and the percentages of their time spent on these activities in order to help this activity get off the ground.

LEAP Time Line Review

What are we doing differently than planned? What is going more slowly than we hoped?

What are we planning for 2004?

The coaching program is developing differently than originally planned — we are doing the training for coaches over a shorter time period (one week rather than a month of training). A longer training period would make it much harder to recruit coaches. Also, feedback from the coaches indicates that we are providing them with what they need in the one week training. We are still finding it hard to recruit faculty to be coached — we will decide in January 2004 if we should train more coaches in June or focus on the leadership workshops. We are still in a development phase for the post-doc training and the web site is still fairly basic. The planned myths paper was postponed in favor of working on a journal publication discussing the methods used to determine the status of women at the university.

2004: Summary of plans

We have three main focus areas for 2004. By the end of the year we want to have

• Updated the recruitment policy for the campus so that the percentage of women the applicant pool for faculty positions is increased.

• Developed a set of professional standards for conduct on campus.

• Developed a chairs training program.

We also plan to work on the development of a "best practices" document with input from all the ADVANCE groups.

LEAP Time Line for January-December 2004

January

• Introductory Leadership Workshop.
• Decision on chairs training for summer 04.
• Short Workshop on "Listening Skills"
• Submit "Methods" paper
• Submit book chapter on "Networking"

February

• Plan post-doc program.
• Seattle Meeting

March

• Quarterly report to NSF.
• Complete recruiting for June workshops.
• Present updated project plan and timelines to advisory board.
• Review progress on year goals.
• Finalize recruitment task force.

April

• Planned presentation by Robert Drago on work/life balance.
• Atlanta Meeting

May

• Denver Meeting of APS.
• Prepare for long workshops.
• Plan for fall 04 outreach activities for graduate students.
• Review course development activities.

June

• Leadership workshop — advanced
• Coaching Workshop
• Quarterly Report to NSF.

July

• Review, refine 2004 timeline.
• Review, refine budget.
• Leadership Workshop — Introductory

August

• Review and respond to workshop feedback from evaluation team.
• Finalize ’05 four day workshop offerings.
• Plan ’05 offerings.

September

• Advertise and recruit for AY 05 workshops and for advisees.
• Recruit incoming graduate students for outreach activities.
• Quarterly report for NSF
• Recruit one-year AVC

October

• Review progress on 2004 goals. Act as needed.

November

• Finalize Spring 05 workshops.
• Draft Summer, Fall 05 schedules.
• Complete selection of January workshop participants.

December

• Yearly review of activities — what worked, what needs changing
• Annual report to NSF.