Asking Big: Creating a Culture of Support for Academic Mothers’ Advocating in Times of Crisis

This essay brings into focus institutional inequities faced by academic parents that stem from the systematic socialization of women to remain silent about their professional and personal needs under ideal circumstances and even more so in times of crisis. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic’s changing higher education policies daily, we argue there has never been a better time for us to ask for more when academic women, especially those identifying as mothers, are suffering professionally and personally. We trace key cultural insights and recent research regarding how the global pandemic has increased the strain that academic mothers feel, particularly BIPOC mothers, before calling on readers to reclaim their right to advocate on behalf of their and their families’ needs. We conclude by defining the culture of asking we seek to foster at our own institution and make recommendations for how readers might “ask big” at their home institutions.

Who Is Okay? The Harm of One-Dimensional Appraisals of Women Scholars During COVID-19 & Beyond

In this essay, I detail how homogenizing appraisals of diverse faculty women during COVID-19 are harmful to all, including myself. I highlight how academic demands to be “talking heads” and not full human beings, though not new, is especially harmful in the current era. As a Black woman faculty dealing with the double pandemic of COVID-19 and anti-Black racism, the one-dimensional appraisals of women faculty exclude me: I am not a mother dealing with sexist overburden in household responsibilities that interfere with my work. Instead, I am dealing with isolation and loneliness, which I sublimate through work productivity. Resulting in shame, I also realize that universities could operate differently, recognizing women scholars for their diversity in identities, backgrounds, responsibilities, work styles, and personalities during the pandemic and beyond. Given that work productivity is not synonymous with well-being, I hope my colleagues know that, in this moment, I am not okay.

Maintaining Career Momentum: Women-Centered Strategies for Social Sciences Career Success in the Context of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic poses unforeseen risks to women’s academic career advancement. Women faculty are more likely to be grappling with new challenges related to caregiving and work-life balance, compared to their male colleagues, and may be facing more research obstacles due to the disruption of human-subjects data collection. In the following essay, we, two tenure-stream social scientists, describe four strategies that we have relied on to maintain career momentum: staying passionate, engaging in active mentorship, making virtual connections, and launching research in COVID. We conclude with recommendations for institutions of higher education to formalize specific policies to support gender and intersectional equity in career advancement. These include more formalized mentor programs, professional development for and access to technology resources for the purposes of research, institutional training and support in leading research teams, seed grants for racial and gender disparities research, and pro-family policies that provide financial supports and job security in the context of caregiving.

Gender, Relationship Status, and COVID-19

This article is a personal reflection about being a single woman in academia during the COVID-19 pandemic. I describe how the pandemic has influenced my mental health and well-being and my feelings of connectedness to my institution, colleagues, and students. I discuss how gender, relationship status, and singlism may have influenced the social support and workload of single female faculty during the pandemic, and the need to explore these phenomena more intentionally to support and retain diverse women in the academy. By tying research examples to my personal experience, I hope to inform a conversation about how institutions can be more inclusive and intentional about challenging inequities associated with gender, relationship status, and singlism, along with combating social isolation and supporting better work-life balance for female faculty members who are not partnered and do not have children.

Women of Color Faculty Reimagining Institutional Spaces During the COVID-19 Pandemic

As women of color faculty who have experienced challenges associated with hostile work environments within predominantly white institutions, we consider the ways that working remotely during COVID-19 offers transformative possibilities for reimagining our relationship to the academy. We discuss our embodied responses to institutional spaces that often marginalize faculty of color; how university leadership may be reimagined through a blurring of gendered, racialized lines of “public” and “private” (or institutional and domestic) spaces; and the possibility of healing from the trauma associated with oppressive workplaces and institutional betrayals.

General Chemistry Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) Program at the University of Texas El Paso

The Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) Program at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is a program that provides students with the training necessary to host small workshops for students enrolled in their first two semesters of Chemistry. Peer Leaders are tasked with the responsibility of facilitating learning of Chemistry through the creation of practice problems, reviews and interactive games. As UTEP is a Latinx-serving university, a large portion of Peer Leaders and students are Latinx. Therefore, the PLTL program is empowering students through the development of Peer Leaders' leadership, and the strengthening of students' foundation in Chemistry, making them more likely to succeed in the STEM field. Peer Leaders in the program have witnessed the impact of the COVID-19pandemic on Latinx students and have found ways to adapt to the shift to online learning.