The Nsf Advance Program And The Recruitment And Retention Of Women Engineering Faculty At New Mexico State University

Recruitment and retention of women engineering faculty has become an increasingly important issue as baby boomers hired in the 1970s and early 1980s have begun to retire. In general, higher education has difficulty competing with the lucrative salaries, benefits, and working conditions offered by industry, which is especially the case with engineering. Concern for the professorate has led to a number of programmatic efforts at the National Science Foundation (NSF) to improve access to the professorate by minorities such as the Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professorate program and the Bridges to the Doctorate program that is an addon to the highly successful Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Program. To increase women’s participation in the professorate, the NSF developed the ADVANCE: Institutional Transformation Program, which intends to increase the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women within academia.