The University of Michigan and Michigan State University have been awarded a three-year, $1.4 million National Science Foundation grant for CLIMBS-UP, a collaborative research project to study inclusive environments in science, technology, engineering and math within academia.
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Isis Settles, U-M professor of psychology, and Afroamerican and African studies; and Kendra Spence Cheruvelil, MSU professor of fisheries and wildlife, and the Lyman Briggs College, lead a multi-institutional team of researchers investigating how inclusivity affects outcomes of early career scholars in STEM fields.
“In our past work, we learned about the ways that open science can increase community engagement in science, how power dynamics affect the authorship decisions that often determine academic success, and how team climate affects career outcomes in academia, especially for people from marginalized groups,” Cheruvelil said.
“This new grant allows us to broaden our scope to study new disciplines, all with the goal of helping to broaden participation in academic STEM careers.”
The project team also includes: Erin Cech, U-M assistant professor and associate graduate director of sociology; Kevin Elliott, MSU professor of fisheries and wildlife, philosophy, and the Lyman Briggs College; and Georgina Montgomery, MSU associate professor of history, and the Lyman Briggs College.
The project will be built on the organizational theory of person-environment fit, which suggests that career outcomes are improved when an organization’s work environment matches the needs, skills and values of its employees.
The researchers contend that for individuals in underrepresented groups to flourish, they must be in inclusive climates where differences are valued and everyone is welcome. For example, authorship of publications is an important measure of academic success and is a critical area to introduce more inclusive practices, they say.
“Most previous research has focused on inclusive climates in a scholar’s department,” Settles said. “An innovative aspect of our project is that in addition to the department, we examine inclusive climates within research groups and in the larger profession. We think that inclusive climates at all three levels inform early career scholars’ decisions about entering or persisting in academic careers.”
The project will involve quantitative online surveys of 3,500 graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and assistant professors in 120 STEM departments across the country. Using a technique called structural equation modeling, researchers will quantify the effect of inclusive climates on career outcomes of scholars at three career stages, in departments with varying institutional prestige, and in disciplines with different norms and cultures.
The team will focus on four STEM fields — biology, economics, physics and psychology — in which racial minority representation in faculty is low and gender representation is either low or moderate. The results will be shared broadly, with the goal of reducing barriers to career advancement for underrepresented, early-career scholars.
“The interdisciplinarity of our team has allowed us to study diversity in STEM fields using insights from many disciplines, which is a tremendous strength of our collaboration,” Settles said.
