The ADVANCE Resource & Coordination (ARC) Network

From 2018 to 2025, the ARC Network Virtual Visiting Scholar (VVS) Program provided funding to cohorts of two to five scholars to conduct research on existing or emerging themes from scholarly literature on intersectional gender equity and related systemic issues in STEM workplaces. Throughout the life of the program, twenty-one scholars used qualitative and/or quantitative meta-analytic and meta-synthesis techniques to identify best practices, gaps in knowledge, and other overarching themes across the body of knowledge to inform new directions for research and implications for policy and practice. Topics explored included networking, mentoring, entrepreneurship, citation practices, the use of gender in research, funding practices, workload, contingent faculty experiences, LGBT+ experiences, persistence strategies, academic-industry partnerships, bystander intervention, international faculty experiences, academic motherhood, visibility of equity workers, time to publication, retention, institutional pushout, identity formation, and more.

You can learn more about each scholar’s project here.

VVS webinar presentations and final reports will be available in the WKC soon.

ARC Network Emerging Research Workshops convened 20-25 scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines, career stages, institution types, and social demographic backgrounds for intensive, two-day meetings centered around emerging topics critical to equity for STEM faculty. Participants engaged in facilitated discussions on current research and practice, identified gaps in knowledge and approach, curated recommended resources and reading lists, and recommended areas for new research, policy, and/or intervention. Each workshop resulted in a report that was shared with the larger community for additional contribution. The final reports were released in tandem with a webinar about the workshop and broadly disseminated. Topics included identity-based harassment, equity issues in big data and algorithms, exclusionary STEM language, faculty equity and COVID-19, and equity in academic commercialization.

In addition, ARC Network Emerging Issues Workshops were intended to focus on urgent community concerns about which a body of scholarship and practice had not yet formed, but around which collective action was needed. ARC Network hosted one Emerging Issues Workshop in 2024 that centered on state-level law and policy restricting equity work and brought together change agents from across sectors, including academia, STEM professional societies, and government.

Reports, webinar recordings, and other resources related to these Emerging Workshops will be available in the WKC soon.

The ARC Network hosted the ADVANCE Equity in STEM Community Convening (ADVANCE EiSCC) in 2019 and 2022-2024 with about 400 people attending each year.

This 3-4 day convening served as the conference for past, current, and prospective ADVANCE grantees. Through workshops, panels, keynotes, symposia, High-5 lightning talks, posters and exhibits, networking events, and sessions with NSF Program Officers, attendees shared new research findings, exchanged resources and ideas, demonstrated effective programs and promising practices, connected with colleagues, formed new collaborations and partnerships, received feedback on new projects, and more.

In 2023 and 2024 with supplemental funding from the NSF and the Every Page Foundation, the ARC Network was also able to offer a travel grant program to support 151 people in attending the convening, more than 75 percent of whom had never attended before.
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Materials from the ADVANCE EiSCC will be available in the WKC soon.