Once faculty are established in an academic career, awards provide a means to recognize and highlight their achievements. From the faculty perspective, both the achievements and the awards are part of the context for promotion, advancement and appointment to new positions. From the university perspective, awards provide an opportunity to actively promote individual faculty members while simultaneously demonstrating university commitment to advancing its faculty. Within the context of Bolman and Deal's symbolic framework, awards can be one of the symbolic strategic leadership approaches that deliberately highlight institutional commitment to advancing faculty, including women faculty, while providing a context for leaders to articulate thoughts on campus culture and the climate for women. This symbolic perspective focuses on the organization's cultural norms, customs, and accepted practices, and includes the institution's commitment to a welcoming and supportive environment for both women and men faculty and an academic setting that is conducive to their career success. Examining award recipients is one method of ensuring that evolving university values reflect the diverse faculty composition and the university's dedication to that diversity. This paper examines the faculty award structure at a large private university as an indicator of evolving university values that esteem the achievements of faculty and support them in their career advancement. Data on university awards for faculty since the 1964-65 academic year were examined with regard to recipient gender. For the academic years 2007-08 through 2011-12, the percentage of awards received by female faculty is compared to a weighted percentage of females in the faculty population (based on the number and type of awards and data provided by institutional research). This analysis indicates that, over the five-year period examined, women at the university were underrepresented, at 12.1%, as award recipients, when by their representation among the faculty one would expect 30.5% ± 8.0%. This study is part of a large NSF ADVANCE IT project (Grant No. 1209115), which focuses on women faculty in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), including those in the social and behavioral sciences (SBS). The project's goal is to increase the representation and advancement of women STEM/SBS faculty, widely represented across ethnic, social, and cultural backgrounds, by removing barriers to resources that support career success and by creating new interventions and resources. The faculty awards study supports the overall project goal by examining the university's award recipient history, identifying patterns that may have existed and if necessary suggesting strategies to identify areas for change. This paper sets a context for the awards study by first providing a framework for the rewards and recognitions for STEM academic women in Section 1. Section 2 reviews barriers for STEM women in academia, from their beginnings as students to their experiences as mid-career faculty. An analysis of faculty awards at the university under study is found in Section 3. Sections 4 and 5 provide discussion and conclusions/next steps, respectively.
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