ADVANCE Center 2024-2025 Highlights

Highlights of  2024-2025

In 2024-2025, the ADVANCE Center continued its strategy to focus on faculty development and success rooted in continuous attention to issues and outcomes that prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion. Below, read a high level snapshot across the main domains of ADVANCE: 

ADVANCE Center resources, scope and leadership for optimizing impact

• ADVANCE Center selected and completed the appointment process for Dr. Stephanie Powell Watts as a co-Faculty Director for three years starting January 1, 2025. Dr. Powell Watts will focus on retention, with special attention to women of color and associate professors. Dr. Joan Ramage Macdonald was reappointed for a second term; her core focus with recruitment and professional development continues to be the AFFDP, STEM Faculty Women and overall evaluation equity, transparency and fairness.
• ADVANCE Center website transitioned to new version of Drupal.
• Collaborated on a new vision and proposal for physical space with CGE and WGSS; while this was unsuccessful, we leveraged for overlapping goals and began partnerships.
• Support the community, especially STEM women through challenging impacts of federal executive orders on higher education and STEM research ecosystem.

Advancing Future Faculty Development Postdoctoral Program

• Onboard Cohort 2, and deliver activities for Cohort 1 & 2 (total of 7 scholars)- monthly meetings, activities.
• AFFDP launched and completed recruitment of 3 scholars into Cohort 3, who will start AY 25-26. This included information sessions and collaborations to identity and prepare qualified host units.
• Total scholars hired through three cycles AFFDP 11 (9 women, 2 men) into 9 units across all 5 colleges (1 as an RAP); Total scholars transitioning to faculty: 3 (2 at Lehigh, 1 elsewhere).
• AFFDP scholars' professional activities through this report: (Fall 23, Summer 23, Spring 24, Fall 24) demonstrate high level of activity and new knowledge creation and dissemination.
  • Conference Talk/Paper: (presented/accepted): 10
  • Manuscript/Article/Book (book proposal, manuscript revision, journal accepted): 11
  • Teaching (course taught, significantly prepared, guest lectured): 11
  • Grant (applied or received): 14
  • Service/Leadership (presided, committee member, external speaker, mentor, etc.): 10
  • Professional Development (attending, learning, mentoring, career): at least 43
• Special meeting with new Dean about AFFDP
• Adapt policies and programming based on Year 1 Lessons Learned, including from June EISCC Presentation.
• Review mentoring plans and progress for each scholar.
• Partner with Office of Postdoctoral Affairs to improve onboarding, professional development for all postdoctoral scholars
• Refine pathway to professoriate procedures
• Successful appointment of AFFDP Dr. Her to Assistant Professor in Education and Human Services.

Faculty Recruitment (Outreach, Hiring, Onboarding)

• Hosted 4 workshops Best Practices for Inclusive and Excellent Faculty Recruitment satisfying the ADVANCE Center goal of educating and equipping search committees to be fair, inclusive, equitable in their search for excellent and diverse faculty. This program is available for members of search committees to attend, satisfying the requirement to attend every other year. An additional three special consultation workshops were held in the spring for search committees launched later in the season. Of 136 members of Faculty Search Committees, 47% completed training (Dec 2024 statistic)
• Faculty Recruitment Ambassador Program recognized by HEED; Trained new cohort of ambassadors (22);  Met with 141 candidates across campus.
• Expert consultation to the Faculty Senate in final developments ahead of the passage of the DI&E in Hiring Motion; preparing for supplemental education, implementation, and assessment needs. Subsequently, responded to institutional request to update the name of the statement to "Contributions to The Principles of Our Equitable Community and to update the guidance documents, accordingly.
• Consult to Faculty Affairs on internal process and workflow expectations, including data tracking
• Pilot workshop on rubrics, with a special emphasis on assessing statements on contributions to DI&E.
• Supported the work on the special new administration working group.
• Administered Spring Lessons Learned end of search cycle survey. (Faculty Affairs reports the final slate of incoming faculty members).

Faculty Retention (includes: Culture, Climate, Advancement-Evaluation, Mentoring, Leadership)

• Onboarding and Infrastructure for Faculty Success
  • Presented at New Faculty Orientation (August 2024) & New Faculty Reunion (May 2025)
  • Presented at Chair Orientation (August 2024) about ways chairs can leverage resources and expertise from ADVANCE
  • Published first New Faculty Professional Development & Leadership Table to enable faculty to identify opportunities and programs at-a-glance
  • Presented at the VPR's Research Development session on Broader Impacts. Shared resources for grant proposal language, showcasing the role ADVANCE Center may play in future grantmaking and projects.
• Identify Culture/Climate Challenges
  • Drafted survey with CGE & WGSS about faculty and staff experiences through the new presidential administration- will return to this in the Fall 2025
  • Exit Interviews, upon request (ADVANCE leaders conducted 5 exit interviews this academic year)
  • Faculty director strengthening campus partnerships with OMA and Africana Studies
  • Faculty director reviewing exit surveys and COACHE survey data to consider retention interventions mapped to evidence based challenges
• Mentoring and Community
  • New Faculty Mentoring via INC Program, implementing IDP framework, four main INC groups, 3 fall meetings and 3 spring meetings, 15 new faculty engaged throughout the year.
  • Contributed to the updated Office of Research guidance and resources to support faculty to prepare robust mentoring plans within their grant proposals
  • CIMER at Lehigh- convenings and adaptations of national mentor skills curriculum, co-facilitated in partnership with Associate Deputy Provost for Graduate Education and/or Postdoctoral Affairs Manager.
    • CIMER Research Mentoring workshop series, (completed by 9 faculty and 4 postdocs)
    • CIMER Mentoring Up Skills Workshop Series for 13 graduate students and postdocs, 9 of whom earned completion certificates.
    • Adapt CIMER-based curriculum for Clare Boothe Luce Undergraduate Research Scholars and their faculty and grad student mentors, in partnership with Deputy Provost for Graduate Education
    • Adapt CIMER-based mentoring bootcamp for RCEAS Grad mentors of undergraduate Research Scholars
  • Co-sponsor University membership to NCFDD and administered application and selection of 6 faculty to the Fall 2025 Faculty Success Program of NCFDD and 5 to the Summer FSP and encouraged incoming department chairs to participate in a new Chair leadership program .
  • LU-WISE started the Fall semester emphasizing focus on awards and nominations and 7 STEM women received recognition at the Fall 2025 Faculty Awards; continued to meet monthly. Other notable highlights include:
    • January & February LU-WISE included discussions with DPFA and about Campus responses to executive actions as well as the recent work of the faculty senate.
    • March LU-WISE discussed the Entrepreneurship ecosystem, featuring VP Lisa Getzler
    • April LU-WISE featured a panel about the Experiences of International STEM Women in collaboration with VP Dr. Matherly of OIA; 35 attended.
  • Launched Wellness Lunches- Faculty Director Powell Watts launched this program for women of color and their allies in Spring 2025 with three meetings to form and plan. The work of this group may take the form of activities designed to promote professional development, events designed for self care and stress management, and networking and mentorship and leadership opportunities. About 12 faculty and staff attended each event. The goals identified include:
    • to foster and to enhance the support systems for women of color and their allies on campus;
    • to create a space for connection, sharing and peer-mentoring;
    • and to uplift this community to help them feel seen and valued at Lehigh.
  • Partnered with CGE and LU-WISE to consider future leadership, projects, and other needs
  • Networked with Mentoring Experts and Practitioners during the UNM National Mentoring Conference, incorporating learnings to existing programs
• Equitable Faculty Evaluation, Promotion & Tenure, Faculty Success
  • Co-authored revisions to faculty evaluation guidances for internal colleagues
  • Convened session for 12 mid-career faculty with the Deputy Provost about the Promotion Plan philosophy within the triennial review
  • Hosted FSPN, LU-WISE+, and RCEAS D&I Council to solicit additional feedback and insights about the Faculty Workload Equity Policy and Implementation Framework and provided that to faculty senate for integration into their working group structure when they are ready.
  • Expert Consultations and Advice:
    • Faculty Senate: provide expertise to Tenure and Promotion working group, and the Service Load and Equity working group
    • “Multiple paths to full professor” “holistic evaluation” “value proposition of different modes of scholarly impact”
    • individuals facing equity and climate challenges and associated follow-ups with university leaders, as needed
    • Department and Department Chair Knowledge and Capacity consultation and support
  • Launched LIFT for associate professors to support one another on their path towards promotion within 1-3 years. Three groups formed.
  • Support internal capacity for equity minded faculty evaluation through consulting on internal guidances and providing training
  • External Review letter project resulting in publications so far: explaining that external review letters are not as neutral as expected when it comes to equitable promotion and tenure outcomes.
    • External review letters in academic promotion and tenure decisions are reflective of reviewer characteristics, JM Madera, C Spitzmueller, H Yu, E Edema-Sillo, MSF Clarke
    • Underrepresented minority faculty in the USA face a double standard in promotion and tenure decisions, T Masters-Waage, C Spitzmueller, E Edema-Sillo, A St. Aubin
  • Consultations with individuals facing equity and climate challenges and associated follow-ups with university leaders, as needed

Faculty Equity Research, Dissemination and Outreach

• Available for Department and Department Chair Knowledge and Capacity consultation and support
• Consulted with Office of Research for the equity and outcomes assessment of internal grants programs
• Prepared two abstract proposals to the 2025 EISCC Equity in STEM Community Convening - Conference cancelled- websites silenced.
  • Evolving practice and mindsets about recruiting and retaining for Inclusive Excellence in a College of Engineering: An Early Stage Experience Report- Drs. Swann, Jellison, Levine
  • Poster: Lehigh University AFFDP: Creating procedures for onboarding, mentoring and path to faculty; Drs. Jones, Ramage and Levine.
• Co-author with Dr. Taneka Jones "Addressing the ROOT before the STEM: Cultivating the Black Experience at a PWI" to April 2025 FWCA conference-Accepted and Dr. Jones presented.
• Faculty Director led the project about Faculty & Staff Educational Debt Survey last year, and this year, efforts to consider dissemination routes began.
• Secured collaborative co-sponsorship at Da Vinci Center WISE Forum, 130 HS girls met 9 faculty, student mentors and admissions/outreach staff, at networking/mentoring reception. RCEAS (via STEM Squad), Admissions, Office of Inclusive Excellence and Belonging and ADVANCE all contributed.