ADVANCE: Organizational Change for Gender Equity in STEM Academic Professions | 19 552

Opportunity Information: Apply for 19 552

The National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE: Organizational Change for Gender Equity in STEM Academic Professions grant opportunity is designed to help colleges, universities, and related academic organizations make lasting, system-level improvements that advance equity for STEM faculty. Rather than focusing on support for individual people (such as fellowships, personal research funding, or travel awards), ADVANCE is aimed at changing the structures, policies, practices, and workplace cultures that shape faculty careers. The core idea is that persistent inequities in hiring, workload, evaluation, promotion, and daily professional climate are often produced by organizational systems, so meaningful progress requires evidence-based institutional change rather than isolated programs or one-time trainings.

A central emphasis of this opportunity is expanding and strengthening proven strategies that address gender equity while explicitly incorporating intersectionality. In practical terms, NSF expects proposals to recognize that gender does not operate separately from race, ethnicity, and other dimensions of identity, and that interventions must be designed with those overlapping realities in mind. The solicitation highlights common examples of systemic issues, such as departments that unevenly distribute teaching and service responsibilities in ways that reduce research time and slow advancement for some faculty, or tenure and promotion systems that fail to reduce the influence of implicit bias and therefore evaluate women and members of historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups less favorably. By targeting these kinds of organizational drivers, ADVANCE seeks to improve equity and inclusion in the academic profession and, in turn, contribute to a stronger and more diverse national STEM workforce.

The program supports STEM broadly as NSF defines it, including not only many science and engineering disciplines but also NSF-supported fields in the learning, social, behavioral, and economic sciences. At the same time, the solicitation notes that clinical science fields are not supported under ADVANCE. Funding is provided as discretionary grants within NSF's science and technology research and development portfolio, with associated CFDA numbers spanning multiple NSF directorates and programs. The opportunity described (Funding Opportunity Number 19-552) was created on February 9, 2019, with an original closing date of June 3, 2019, an award ceiling of $12,500,000, and an expectation of roughly 38 awards, signaling a program with capacity for substantial, multi-year institutional efforts.

A key feature of the solicitation is its four funding tracks, which are intended to support different entry points and scales of organizational change. Institutional Transformation (IT) projects are generally geared toward comprehensive, campus-wide or multi-unit change efforts that restructure systems and accountability to improve equity outcomes for STEM faculty. Adaptation projects support organizations that want to adopt or tailor strategies that have already shown evidence of success in other contexts, focusing on thoughtful translation rather than reinventing approaches from scratch. Partnership projects emphasize collaboration across institutions or organizations to address shared challenges, leverage complementary strengths, and potentially accelerate adoption of effective reforms at scale. Catalyst projects are structured to help institutions build readiness for deeper transformation, for example by diagnosing barriers, strengthening data capacity, engaging stakeholders, and laying the groundwork for future large-scale implementation.

Overall, this ADVANCE opportunity is best understood as a call for institutions to commit to measurable, evidence-based reforms that change how academic workplaces function for STEM faculty. Competitive proposals are expected to be grounded in research and prior ADVANCE knowledge, to directly address systemic sources of inequity (policy, practice, climate, and culture), and to use intersectional design so that improvements are meaningful across diverse groups of women and other faculty affected by overlapping forms of bias and structural disadvantage. For individuals looking for student or trainee support, NSF points instead to federal STEM opportunity portals for undergraduates and graduate students, reinforcing that ADVANCE funding is specifically reserved for organizational change rather than individual awards.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "ADVANCE: Organizational Change for Gender Equity in STEM Academic Professions" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.041, 47.049, 47.050, 47.070, 47.074, 47.075, 47.076, 47.079, 47.083.
• This funding opportunity was created on Feb 09, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jun 03, 2019. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $12,500,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 38 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for 19 552

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