ADVANCE Increasing the Participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE program, titled "ADVANCE: Increasing the Participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers" (NSF 14-573), is a grant opportunity focused on changing the systems and structures within higher education that shape faculty careers in STEM. Rather than targeting students or pipeline programs, ADVANCE concentrates on the academic workplace itself, with the aim of making faculty careers in STEM more equitable and more attractive for women. The program is built around three core goals: creating systemic approaches that increase the representation and advancement of women in academic STEM careers; developing innovative, sustainable strategies to improve gender equity across the academic STEM workforce; and strengthening the overall diversity of the science and engineering workforce by addressing barriers that limit women faculty. A major emphasis is also placed on generating and sharing knowledge about what works, so that successful approaches can inform broader efforts across academia.

ADVANCE supports institutional transformation across a wide definition of STEM. Covered areas include, but are not limited to, biological sciences, computer and information sciences, engineering, geosciences, mathematics, physical sciences, Arctic and Antarctic sciences, the learning sciences, and the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. The program treats these projects as team-based research and change efforts, meaning proposals are expected to be led by multidisciplinary teams with the theoretical, methodological, and institutional expertise needed to design interventions, implement them effectively, and evaluate outcomes in a credible way. Another important feature is its attention to "special populations of women," explicitly recognizing that experiences differ across race and ethnicity, disability status, sexual orientation, and other backgrounds, and that gender equity work should account for these intersecting factors.

The solicitation is organized into three distinct tracks, each with a different purpose and scale of change. The Institutional Transformation (IT) track is designed for large-scale, comprehensive institutional change and is intended to serve as a hub for both implementing reforms and producing research-based insights on gender equity and institutional transformation in academic STEM. Projects in this track typically address institutional policies, practices, and culture in a coordinated way, aiming for deep and lasting change rather than isolated initiatives. The Institutional Transformation Catalyst (IT Catalyst) track is structured to help institutions either conduct a rigorous self-assessment of their current conditions or implement and test targeted strategies. Those strategies may be adapted from approaches shown to be effective through prior IT projects, or they may be newly designed to fit the institution's particular context. A defining element of IT Catalyst proposals is evaluation: the intent is not just to try something new, but to measure whether it works and under what conditions.

The third track, Partnerships for Learning and Adaptation Networks (PLAN), is built for broader networked learning and implementation. PLAN projects create environments where multiple entities can adapt and apply a particular change strategy, compare results, and learn collectively about effectiveness across settings. PLAN is specifically oriented toward adaptation, implementation, and learning at scale, and it may be organized either within particular STEM disciplines (PLAN D) or across institutions of higher education (PLAN IHE). Unlike IT and IT Catalyst, which are expected to cover all STEM disciplines at the submitting institution, PLAN awards may focus on all of STEM or on a subset of disciplines, including a single discipline, depending on the project design and objectives.

NSF strongly encourages a range of institution types to apply across all project types, particularly those whose faculty contexts may differ from research-intensive universities and may require tailored approaches. This includes community colleges, primarily undergraduate institutions, minority-serving institutions (such as Tribal Colleges and Universities, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, Alaska Native Institutions, Predominantly Black Institutions, and non-tribal Native American Serving Institutions), women's colleges, and institutions that primarily serve persons with disabilities. The solicitation explicitly anticipates that the challenges and leverage points in these settings may be different, making the development of unique strategies, or the adaptation of proven strategies in new ways, an important part of achieving ADVANCE goals.

A key boundary of the program is that ADVANCE does not fund activities aimed at increasing the number of women entering or persisting in undergraduate or doctoral STEM programs. In other words, it is not a student recruitment or retention program. The focus is on faculty careers and the institutional conditions that influence hiring, promotion, tenure, leadership opportunities, workload distribution, climate, and overall advancement. Because of that emphasis, proposals should not include student training initiatives or student-centered programming as a primary component.

The solicitation also addresses dependent care costs in a practical way. In general, ADVANCE funds cannot be used to pay for dependent care directly. However, dependent care expenses may be allowable when they are treated as part of employee morale and welfare costs and are charged through established fringe benefit or indirect cost (Facilities and Administrative, or F&A) mechanisms, consistent with the institution's approved policies and applied uniformly across federal and non-federal sponsors. This means institutions may have some flexibility, but only within the constraints of their existing, formally approved cost structures and NSF allowability guidance.

From the funding details provided, this is a discretionary NSF grant opportunity with an estimated total funding amount of $11,000,000. Individual awards range from a floor of $100,000 up to a ceiling of $4,000,000, and there is no cost sharing or matching requirement. The opportunity is associated with multiple NSF CFDA program areas that reflect the breadth of STEM and NSF directorates involved, including Engineering (47.041), Mathematical and Physical Sciences (47.049), Geosciences (47.050), Computer and Information Science and Engineering (47.070), Biological Sciences (47.074), Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (47.075), Education and Human Resources (47.076), and the Office of International Science and Engineering (47.079). The original posting date is listed as June 3, 2014, with the opportunity later archived on February 19, 2016; the listing also notes multiple due dates over time and instructs applicants to consult the full opportunity for the applicable deadline cycle.

In plain terms, ADVANCE is aimed at helping colleges and universities change the rules, norms, and decision-making practices that shape who gets hired, who gets supported, who advances, and who stays in academic STEM. It prioritizes evidence-driven institutional change, careful evaluation, and strategies that can be sustained and shared, with dedicated pathways for both comprehensive campus-wide transformation and for scalable networked learning across institutions or disciplines.

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