Oh, Nuria (if I may use your first name?), your comment about heartening and disheartening encapsulates much of our experience!  The specific outcomes sought were one new policy per year: 1) Automatic Stop-the-Clock for personal reasons associated with pregnancy and adoption; 2) Salary equity by gender; 3) Paid leave for personal and extended family reasons; 4) Modified duties for non-FMLA contingencies; and 5) transparency in evaluation annually and for Promotion and Tenure.  We have mixed success.  As our presentation shows, we accomplished our first, and are continuing to work with our administrative colleagues on number 4.  Our system has moved toward number 2 without a clear policy.  Number 3 has been implemented, but does require use of sick leave for anything but birth or adoption.  Number 5 has not been successful.

We have been fortunate to have Dr. KerryAnn O'Meara as our policy consultant through this grant, so the actual wording of policies we have proposed follow those at other universities in the United States as well as best practices from past ADVANCE grant work.

What's so interesting is not that we are being completely blocked by our system, but that we have had to recreate the structure of communication and agreement given administrative turnover (all of our Provosts, who constitute our Steering Committee, had gone between the application and award of the grant) at the multiple levels of this project. We have had to reintroduce many of our administrators at both the many institutional and state levels to the objectives of the grant, and to recreate buy-in from them.  Given the nature of administrative turnover in higher education today, we continue to be heartened by our work together, but somewhat disheartened by the perpetual need to communicate our objectives.  Thanks for your comment, and please let us know if we can provide further information.  Note that I encourage my colleagues to respond as well.

Of course, call me Nuria. 

What you describe sounds like Sisyphus and Tantalus. How frustrating. Thank you for taking on this work. I hope that it resonates across the country and that the changes that you are able to enact reverberate to other states. As you mentioned in the video, what looks like a small population in one institution becomes a pretty large group across the state. Multiply that by 50 (or more, given that SD is not a big state in terms of population), and the size of the problem is considerable. 

I would love to hear about male faculty buy-in as well. Things won't change unless they support change. 

Thanks for talking about male faculty buy-in. I responded to Overtooun's post above before I saw this. 

Thank you Stephen (if I may?) for the question! The primary points of pushback have been at all levels and with many diverse campus and system offices. For example, a key element of our research was to examine faculty evaluation documents but we have had difficulties in accessing those documents despite the approved IRB protocols. Don't get me wrong, it does require additional work on the part of our HR colleagues at both the institutional and systemic level, which is not a common expectation for grant work at most institutions. More broadly, we have had multiple conversations over the years about the efficacy and importance of "best practices" v. policy. Given that each institution has different demographics, size and needs, best practices are often preferred. However, as we all know, best practices don't always result in the same outcomes in different locations barring an overriding policy. So, we have dealt with this conversation through, as common as the phrase is these days, we persisted and persist!

Unfortunately, no. Sample size is a problem here, although something we're definitely interested in.

Thanks to Andrea for response, and let me add a little context.  In a state like ours, the vast majority of faculty are white, and most faculty of underrepresented minorities are international.  Therefore, gathering data based on those characteristics often made it impossible to maintain confidentiality in both qualitative and quantitative outcomes.  Other institutional research on campus climate does confirm the presence of community and campus implicit bias and issues based on race and citizenship status. Further, like many states right now, our legislature is pushing back against "diversity" initiatives, leaving those faculty feeling even more vulnerable.  As Andrea notes, we certainly have interest, but wanted to ensure that any of our research protected those faculty.  In future, we hope for a more open, honest and safe environment for our colleagues.