RU FAIR ADVANCE goals can be summed as two overarching or meta-initiatives that are key to women's full participation and advancement in STEM and drive institutional transformation and RU FAIR activities: 1) Recruitment and Retention and 2) Leadership and Professional Development.
Five initiatives support our goals:
- Recruitment and Retention Initiatives:
- Develop a targeted strategy for increasing the number of women in general, and minority women in particular, on the STEM faculty of Rutgers University.
- Communication Initiatives:
- Enhance communication among faculty within a geographically and structurally complex multi-campus university.
- Build on exisisting initiatives to enhance our web presence and establish RU FAIR professorships within different schools and campuses.
- Sponsor social events, such as lunches and picnics, to give STEM faculty from different campuses more opportunities to network.
- Networking and Liaisons with Women's Programs Initiatives:
- Develop RU FAIR mini-grants for faculty development and to encourage interdisciplinary research across schools and campuses.
- Work closely with the nationally acclaimed Rutgers Institute for Women's Leadership (IWL) to deliver leadership training, to encourage research, and to develop interdisciplinary courses.
- Visibility Initiatives:
- Achieve greater visibility for our women faculty by creating a bigger web presence, instituting a lecture series, nominating our faculty members and postdoctoral associates for prestigious awards.
- Working with the Rutgers Media Relations to generate increased press coverage for their research accomplishments.
- Family Initiatives:
- Bolster the resources available for dual career families, families with children, and families caring for elderly members.
- Institute a dialogue among administrators, faculty, and staff concerning what changes in current campus structure, tenure regulations, and other policies would best accommodate the needs of families.