Cervato, a Morrill Professor of geological and atmospheric sciences at Iowa State University, is leading collaborators across campus and from three other Midwestern research universities who will develop strategies and tools that could help women of color and women with family responsibilities find faculty success in science, technology, engineering or math fields (STEM).

The idea is for the four Midwestern universities to join forces, collect data, determine useful strategies, develop an Integrated Equity Support toolbox and start a caucus to promote and distribute that toolbox.

The project is supported by a three-year, $996,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE program dedicated to advancing gender equity in academic STEM careers.

In addition to Iowa State, partner universities are Michigan Technological University in Houghton, North Dakota State University in Fargo and Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.

Iowa State collaborators are Dawn Bratsch-Prince, associate provost for faculty; Gül Kremer, professor and C.G. “Turk” & Joyce A. Therkildsen Department Chair in industrial and manufacturing systems engineering; Jo Anne Powell-Coffman, an associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Raj Raman, Morrill Professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering; and Robert Reason, associate dean for undergraduate academic affairs in the College of Human Sciences and professor in the School of Education.

Project leaders for the other partnership schools are Canan Bilen-Green, the vice provost for faculty and equity at North Dakota State; Carla Koretsky, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of geological and environmental sciences at Western Michigan; and Adrienne Minerick, dean of the College of Computing and professor of chemical engineering at Michigan Tech.