In September 2018, NSF awarded a $1 million ADVANCE Adaptation grant to a team of Michigan Tech faculty: PI Adrienne Minerick (SoT) and Co-PIs Sonia Goltz (SBE), Audrey Mayer (SFRES), Patty Sotirin (HU), and Andrew Storer (SFRES). The three-year grant will focus on adapting programs from other ADVANCE institutions to fit the Michigan Tech culture in order to promote faculty success, promotion, and retention. Michigan Tech has been a participant in the NSF ADVANCE vision of STEM equity and campus-wide faculty advancement since 2006. See History of ADVANCE for activities, programs, and policies 2006-2016.
- Advanced Career Management (ACM)—ACM is directed to associate professors and will offer several programs designed to enhance career development. These include workshops addressing possible career tracks (e.g., administration, Fulbright, publishing, grant-funded research, etc.); coaching, mentoring, and networking opportunities; and information resources supporting career advancement. The ACM activities are planned to begin in Fall 2019. ACM is adapted from the University of Michigan’s LIFT program.
- Michigan Tech Allies and Advocates—Adapted from North Dakota State University’s FORWARD Allies and Advocates program. This highly successful program uses restorative justice and broad engagement to change university culture. This is accomplished by training men to be allies and advocates who can initiate grassroots movements for change
- Academy For Responsive Leadership—Adapted from Iowa State University’s ADVANCE Department Enhancement Program (DEP), ARL engages Michigan Tech's academic leadership in workshops, peer to peer learning, and summer reading groups to enhance their abilities to include, support, and empower underrepresented minorities and gender equity at Michigan Technological University.
- Early Career Management program (ECM)—Adapted from the University of Michigan’s STRIDE suite of faculty mentoring and faculty development programs. The ECMs involve first-year support teams for new faculty. The teams engage the issues particular to each faculty member’s successful management of research, teaching, and service responsibilities.
- Diversity Literacy Online Workshop—a mandatory faculty bias literacy workshop introducing concepts of implicit bias, accumulation of disadvantage, and micro-practices that encumber selection, hiring, and promotion processes. The Workshop also includes a Legal Aspects training component.
- Advanced Matrix Process for University Programs (AMP-UP)—a Lean Continuous Improvement (CI) process to dynamically identify, plan, implement, assess, and adjust policies, practices, and programs to enhance faculty success and increase retention. This is a pilot project to implement a transformative and sustainable process of improvement in academic processes.