Note: Thank you for your interest in ADVANCE Project TRACS, our NSF funded Institutional
Transformational Grant which ended August 31, 2017. The pages that follow are historical
documents for informational purposes only.
Former Team Leads: Suzanne Held, Leslie Schmidt, and Linda Young
ADVANCE has institutionalized systematic research support for women faculty in STEM/SBS
fields through grant pre-proposal assistance, a mentoring network of successful grantees,
and facilitating engagement of women in interdisciplinary research that are now incorporated
into the MSU Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE).
Research Resources of the Center for Faculty Excellence
With guidance from the Research Capacity Team with the Office of Sponsored Programs
and coordinated by Nika Stoop (Research Resources Coordinator), the Center sponsors
workshops on all aspects of grant development and management, partners mentors with
faculty for grant-writing support, provides mini-grants for faculty to enhance and
explore additional research opportunities, and offers other initiatives that support
faculty scholarship and success.
Visit the CFE Research website
Interested in enhancing research capacity for women in STEM/SBS at your institution?
Highlighted IMPACT OF THE ENHANCING RESEARCH CAPACITY INITIATIVE
The enhancing research capacity and opportunity initiative was highly successful.
Grant expenditures by women in STEM/SBS more than doubled to nearly $14 million over
the five years of ADVANCE Project TRACS.
Since the start in 2012, the number of projects with women PIs increased by 49% and
the average yearly research expenditure per woman faculty member increased by more
than 22% (see Table 1). These data exclude the ADVANCE grant itself, which was awarded
to a woman faculty in SBS. The gender gap in total grant expenditures per PI in STEM
shrunk by 14%, with the difference between men and women starting at $67,274 (24%)
in 2012 closing to $27,212 (10%) in 2016.
Table 1: Change in Grant Expenditures for Tenured/Tenure-Track Women Faculty at Montana
State University
The Project TRACS Grant Writing Bootcamp and Grant Submission Training Coordinator
were largely responsible for the improvement. During the five years of Project TRACS,
79 faculty (39 tenure track women in STEM) from 30 different departments and centers
(including at least one person from every STEM department on campus) participated
in one of five Grant-Writing Bootcamps designed using the tenets of self-determination
theory. A one-year pre-post test of the impact of Bootcamp on women faculty in STEM’s
research capacity was reported in the peer-reviewed journal Bioscience (Smith et al.,
2017). Over the span of one year (and contrasting results with a comparison sample
who were not part of the intervention) showed women participating in Grant-Writing
Bootcamp significantly increased the number of external grants submitted, number of
proposals led as PI, number of external grants awarded, and amount of external funding
dollars awarded (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: One-year Pre- and One-year Post-Bootcamp Analysis of Participants Compared
to Comparison Sample