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Making WAVES: Women Academics Valued and Engaged in STEM

NSF Advance at UMass Lowell logo

Making WAVES is an initiative to increase diversity of faculty in STEM fields funded by the National Science Foundation ADVANCE Program.

The NSF ADVANCE award allows researchers at UMass Lowell and UMass Medical School to advance the study of gender bias in the workplace. The team focuses on creating new metrics and tools for the assessment and quantification of subtle gender biases and other causes of micro-inequities—the accumulation of subtle biases over a long period of time.

The $3.5 million, five-year grant to UMass Lowell is for an institutional transformation program led by the Center for Women & Work. The goal of the WAVES project, which began in September 2016, is to implement interventions to:

  1. disrupt interpersonal and institutional microaggressions
  2. establish innovative mentoring approaches, and
  3. promote equitable policies and procedures.
Intervention diagram for Microaggressions. Microaggressions are verbal, non-verbal, and/or environmental snubs/insults that slight based on gender and other marginalized group membership; they are notoriously difficult to address. survey results at UMass Lowell indicate that women STEM faculty experience a disproportionate number of microaggressions.

Microaggressions are verbal, non-verbal, and/or environmental snubs/insults that slight based on gender and other marginalized group membership; they are notoriously difficult to address. Survey results at UMass Lowell indicate that women STEM faculty experience a disproportionate number of microaggressions.

Go to the Initiatives page to learn more about our specific goals and interventions:

UMass Lowell MAKING WAVES Initiatives

Learn more about WAVES bystander training workshop:

UMass Lowell MAKING WAVES Bystander Training Workshop

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