After months of managing the pandemic, it is not entirely surprising that college and university faculty members and administrators are exhausted and stressed. [...] Yet this is precisely the moment when colleges and universities must turn to more active and strategic approaches to support faculty members, given the differential impacts of the pandemic on faculty careers. Without engaged interventions, higher education post-COVID will most likely be less diverse, given the pressure the pandemic is placing on women and faculty of color.

As members of the UMass ADVANCE team, funded by the National Science Foundation, our focus is primarily on creating institutional transformation to ensure long-term gender and racial equity in STEM. With the pandemic, we have focused our attention on how institutional responses to COVID-19 can mediate the impact and remain attentive to the important goals of equity, diversity and inclusion.

The pandemic has exacerbated gender inequality, as women have reduced their work hours more than men due to schooling and caregiving demands. In higher education in particular, women faculty members and those with children have been less likely to submit grant proposals and journal articles or register new projects. More and more faculty members fear a secondary epidemic of lost early-career scholars.

During this time, minority women and mothers have been most impacted. Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities have been particularly hit hard by the pandemic in terms of health risks and unemployment, increasing stress, and caregiving responsibilities. BIPOC faculty members are also more likely to be conducting community-engaged research, which has faced additional pandemic interruptions, while also working to support their communities. Many women and faculty of color have also been on the front lines in supporting vulnerable students, with Black, Indigenous and Latina women particularly burdened with mentoring and service work.