Our grant is using the funding from our NSF ADVANCE Adaptation grant to provide women STEM and SBS faculty with mentoring circles, speaker sessions, interactive theatre and work with The Office of the President through a presidential task force focused on four topics, childcare, parental/family leave, spousal accommodations, and flexible work arrangements. All facets of the grant work to address emotional labor by either educating faculty, administration, and the public or providing support for the women in faculty positions. There is much more work to be done at the systemic level as this goes far beyond one University.

The Murray State ADVANCE Grant is using its position in the university to provide education to administration and other faculty but also provide support to the women faculty. Disseminating the data and educating all those involved is the first step towards a true change.

Through Murray State's ADVANCE Catalyst grant we found that the nationwide data on emotional labor in higher education was mimicked and even higher in some areas at our university. This finding was one of the pushes toward applying and receiving the ADVANCE Adaptation grant that we are currently working on. During grant year 1 when the pandemic hit we found that emotional labor for women faculty went to an all-new high and our faculty needed more support than ever. Last summer we started a happy hour we hosted on Zoom every two weeks for women faculty only, this allowed them to have a space to express what they were going through. Even with the amount of Zoom fatigue it was well attended because they needed the support of those that understood.

We have been working on this project for a year and a half of a three-year grant with a one-year no-cost extension that we will be taking, thanks to COVID. It follows the ADVANCE Catalyst Grant where it was identified that the university had specific areas of need to recruit and retain women in STEM the needs were boiled down to implicit bias, support/mentoring, childcare, parental/family leave, spousal accommodation, flexible work arrangements. The ADVANCE Adaptation Grant was written to address those six needs through MSU-Learn, MSU- Grow, MSU- Live. MSU- Learn focuses on implicit bias through our two interactive theatre productions that address the hiring process and tenure and promotion process. MSU- Grow provides women with support through speaker sessions, workshops, and mentoring circles. MSU- Live works to promote work-life balance through a presidential task force working to change policies and procedures.

Interesting to read that one of the strategies is interactive theatre productions. Can you say more about how the theatre productions focus on implicit bias and the hiring and P&T process? Where are these theatre productions played? Who is invited to attend? How often are they offered? What happens after the theater productions? 

The ADVANCE Adaptation Grant uses three programs MSU-Learn, MSU- Grow, MSU- Live to recruit and retain women faculty in STEM. MSU- Learn focuses on implicit bias through our two interactive theatre productions that address the hiring process and tenure and promotion process. MSU- Grow provides women with support through speaker sessions, workshops, and mentoring circles. MSU- Live works to promote work-life balance through a presidential task force working to change policies and procedures.

Through the climate study completed during the ADVANCE Catalyst grant, we found that the following six topics would be the most impactful for the retention and recruitment of women in STEM; implicit bias, support/mentoring, childcare, parental/family leave, spousal accommodation, and flexible work arrangements, these all address emotional labor for faculty in their own way.