[WFA] WFA 2020-21 Report and Updates

[Jennifer Hughes]

Dear Constituents and Allies of the Women's Faculty Association (an organization that is seeking to become more inclusive with respect to gender diversity),

We are writing at the close of a very long and challenging year to update you regarding WFA activities.

New Initiatives
1) WFA Academy of Distinguished Faculty Mentors
The WFA is launching a new Academy of Distinguished Faculty Mentors. Faculty may select a mentor from our list for up to three individual meetings of about an hour in length to discuss merit and promotion at all levels, trajectories of research, the “path to full professor”, balancing research, teaching, and service, navigating the personnel system, and so on. The WFA is coordinating our efforts with the mentoring initiative of Katina Napper out of the Academic Personnel Office (APO).

Mentors must be nominated by WFA constituents (not self-nominated) and are required to participate in a short training offered by the APO to make sure their knowledge of personnel systems is fully up to date.

To nominate someone for the WFA Academy of Distinguished Faculty Mentors, please fill out the survey here (nominees will be contacted but are under no obligation to serve). We invite nominees at all ranks as well as emerita faculty:  https://forms.gle/tkgVcEvrzWQrygpZA

2. Expanded leadership
We received 8 nominations for a new WFA Advisory Committee. The current advisory committee members are:
Xuan Liu (Biochem)
Aleca LeBlanc (Art History)
María del Rosario Acosta López (Hispanic Studies)
Isgouhi Kaloshian (Nematology)
Ruhi Kahn* (Media and Cultural Studies, *representative to CACSW, currently on leave).
We intend to bring on additional members in the fall.  Note that the nomination list is still open.  https://forms.gle/ZuEcHk7W91NR1qzL9
Katherine (School of Ed) and Jennifer (HIST) will continue as co-chairs for one more year, rotating off in June of 2022.

3. WFA leadership has scheduled a July meeting with our new EVC/Provost to share WFA issues and initiatives.
We are asking for your feedback on these initiatives and inviting you to suggest others. We will bring these to our meeting with the EVC/Provost:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/X6M62QV


Ongoing Work
1) Call for comprehensive salary equity study and individual salary equity review upon request
 The WFA continues to advocate for comprehensive salary equity review for our campus by gender and race.  Last year, we submitted a written request to the Senate Committee on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (CODEI) with requests for specific data and our recommended process.  This year we have been in ongoing communication with CODEI chair and the Vice Provost of Academic Personnel (VPAP).

We have also requested that the campus reinstitute a practice of salary equity review upon individual faculty request.  Unlike Career Review, salary equity review does not require external letters and it allows for comparison to individual department or college faculty at target rank and step.

2)Student Evaluation of Teaching
The WFA continues to advocate for a substantial revision of our Student Evaluation of Teaching given that multiple studies have indicated that these are highly subject to bias (gender and race).  We have requested revision of SET questions as well as revised protocol for the use of SET in merit and promotion.  We contributed to subcommittee recommendations on SET.

3) Addressing underrepresentation of women faculty on our campus overall
UCR has the lowest percentage of women faculty in the UC system.  This continues to be the case even after the massive faculty hiring initiative of 2015-2017, which could have been leveraged as an opportunity to bring gender parity to our campus, but only increased the representation of women faculty by about 2%-3% overall.

The WFA submitted the following modest targets for inclusion part of our campus’s strategic vision plan:
Measurable improvement in the status of women faculty on the campus. (A) Increase the percentage of female faculty at UCR from current 38% to the system wide median (42%) by 2025 and to 50% by 2030. (B) Increase the representation of women faculty at Full Professor rank from current 24% to 36% by 2030. (C) Increase the representation of women faculty at the higher rank (Step IV+) from current 18.5% to 30% by 2030.

5) Fostering promotion of women faculty to upper ranks
We continue to seek to address diminishing percentages of women faculty at higher ranks (full professor and above). We observe that there is a lack of parity with respect to time at rank.  UCR is below the average for the UC system with respect to women faculty at the rank of Full Professor.

5) Addressing underrepresentation of women faculty on CAP
We continue to have very low representation of women faculty on key senate committees, the Committee on Committees and Committee on Academic Personnel.  We routinely have among the lowest percentage of women faculty on CAP in the entire UC system.  The WFA has been advocating for the appointment of women faculty to CAP and is calling for parity in communication with senate leadership. This spring we have been at risk falling to 3 or even 2 women faculty on CAP.

6) In the Spring of 2021 the WFA proposed a change to the CALL for 2021-2 that would allow for the consideration of completed chapters of books in progress for faculty in book-based disciplines for purposes of merit review.

Relevant WFA documents are available at this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19ogh1ZB22qE5gwAiKK-QNwkTBgqDxyVs/view?usp=sharing


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