Seed Grants of Change: Building Thriving Networks among Female Geotechnical Faculty Members
Publication: Journal of Civil Engineering Education
Volume 147, Issue 3
Abstract
The Geotechnical Women Faculty (GTWF) project has aimed since its inception in 2016 to promote gender parity among faculty within the subfield of geotechnical engineering and to increase the quality and number of connections among current faculty. This paper is a case study of one element of the GTWF project that offered seed grants to gender-diverse faculty groups to foster networking, collaborative, and mentoring relationships. Seed grants were evaluated through participants’ final reports and interviews conducted by GTWF project researchers. Content analysis was performed on the interview data using two different coding methods, manual and quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) Miner, which were used together to identify key themes. The effectiveness of this project’s seed grants were judged through qualitative assessment, a novel approach among the existing literature on seed grant programs. The study’s findings demonstrate the effectiveness of small grant funding in promoting collaboration and mentoring among junior faculty and leading to greater reported levels of confidence and self-efficacy. Seed grant recipients experienced financial success, with approximately 50% of seed grant projects obtaining additional grant funding.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
A project of this scope and duration is due to the labor of many dozens of individuals, only a few of whom can we properly thank. Among those present at the outset, we thank Dr. Rick Fragaszy (now retired) of the NSF for his decades of championing women in the geotechnical field. We also thank Caitlin Caron for her many hours on content analysis and project coordination and for conducting the interviews that made this paper possible, Ananya Bhupathipali for content analysis and database maintenance, and the student employees who labored intensively at the daily tasks required to sustain such an undertaking. A mighty thank you goes to our fantastic colleagues at Syracuse University Sharon Alestalo for her contribution to the GTWF project from the very beginning, both workshops, and seed grant development, as well as her razor-sharp editing and insights; Sabina Redington, for handling all sorts of budgetary complexities; and Lisa Keley-Heyn for coordinating between Syracuse and “the outside world.” Additionally, we would like to thank the dozens of specialists, technicians, and support staff that allowed all of these projects to run—the building maintenance, IT, administrative, and transportation workers who keep the universities in shape and enable all the work that goes on there. Financial support was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Award No. CMMI-1536542. The opinions expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and are not necessarily consistent with the policies or opinions of the NSF.
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Information & Authors
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Journal of Civil Engineering Education
Volume 147 • Issue 3 • July 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 20, 2020
Accepted: Oct 29, 2020
Published online: Feb 18, 2021
Published in print: Jul 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Jul 18, 2021
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Cited by
- Shobha K. Bhatia, Cameron R. Cumberland, Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos, Patricia M. Gallagher, State of the Field: Changing Geotechnical Faculty Demographics and Recognition, Geo-Congress 2022, 10.1061/9780784484067.048, (485-496), (2022).