Empowering Senior Higher Education Leaders in Developing an Equitable Research Ecosystem

Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

BACKGROUND AND WELCOME

As part of their ongoing work, the Board on Higher Education and Workforce and the Roundtable on Mentorship, Well-being, and Professional Development of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) convened an in-person and online workshop on Empowering Senior Higher Education Leaders in Developing an Equitable Research Ecosystem on April 30, 2024, on the campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

This workshop followed an initial Roundtable workshop in November 2023 on Mentorship, Well-being, and Professional Development in STEMM: Addressing the “Knowing-Doing Gap,” which was designed to help explain the challenge of translating existing theory and research into effective interventions that impact individuals.¹ One of the key themes that emerged from that 2023 workshop was the importance of senior academic leadership making talent development a strategic priority for faculty and administrators.

Since their level of authority impacts other higher education leaders within the STEMM research ecosystem, the April 2024 workshop sought to highlight the roles senior leaders (e.g., presidents, provosts, and deans) play in embodying an equitable research ecosystem—sharing strategies and resources and allowing participants to develop actionable plans that integrate mentorship, well-being, and professional development for graduate and professional students and postdoctoral scholars. The primary presenters and participants were senior academic leaders. In addition, the workshop included three breakout sessions during which senior leaders, deans, chairs, faculty, postdocs, and students were encouraged to develop an action plan to address one key challenge on their campus. Workshop planning committee co-chair Anita Corbett (Emory University) said the committee had designed the workshop presentations and discussions with the goal of having each participant leave with actionable items that would position them to begin to institute specific systemic changes based on their institutional needs.²

Welcome from Duke University

Vincent E. Price, president of Duke University, thanked participants for attending the workshop and being part of this work. “As senior academic leaders, you have the power to influence others’ success and advance our

collective academic mission,” Price said, adding that this workshop offered opportunities to learn from scholars with deep expertise.

As a graduate student, Price had the “incredibly valuable” experience of serving on a faculty search committee, where he saw how curriculum vitae were presented and how the committee debated potential candidates. His own work had been influenced by thoughtful colleagues and generous mentors, Price said, including the support of senior colleagues when he was a young faculty member. He is proud that Duke and other institutions have committed to advancing professional development, mentorship, and well-being and are doing so through systemic, equitable, and evidence-based approaches.

Price then introduced the provost and chief academic officer of Duke University, Alec Gallimore, who spoke in a prerecorded video message. Gallimore said that the topics of the workshop are “critically important to the academy and your institutions” and that academic leaders have the opportunity and responsibility to leverage the university’s full ecosystem as they approach this work. “When we are equitable, we open doors to everyone who is talented and we all benefit from exposure to different ways of thinking,” he said, adding that this is part of what pulled him to the role of provost, and that this work is “easily as complex as any scholarly activity” he could think of. He advised workshop participants to approach this effort with the same rigor and effort of other scholarly work, focus on areas where they could have an impact, and then empower people who have the expertise and commitment to act.

A FOCUS OF HIGHER EDUCATION LEADERSHIP

Sherilynn Black (Duke University), co-chair of the Roundtable, thanked participants for prioritizing the workshop. To her knowledge, this was the first time the Roundtable’s core concepts had been talked about with an intersectional lens among such a high level of leadership.

Black introduced a model displaying the intersections among professional development, mentorship, and well-being, including how all three concepts interact with one another in training environments. She shared some of the findings in the literature: postdoctoral scholars using individual development plans (IDPs)³ (a document that includes specific professional development goals and objectives and helps facilitate mentee/mentor communication) reported improved relationships and engagement with career development resources (Vanderford et al., 2018);⁴ faculty with assigned mentors reported higher levels of job satisfaction regardless of faculty rank or track (Chung et al., 2010);⁵ and science identity and community or cohort membership increased student persistence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers (Syed et al., 2019).⁶ This research suggests that thinking about one of these topics means thinking holistically about the others, Black said. However, current political events add another context to this inquiry, with approximately 20 states currently engaged in legislation to restrict or remove policies and initiatives relating to equity (Lieb, 2024).^7,8

Black explained that the first Roundtable workshop focused on the gap between knowledge and action, examining the barriers that hinder effective action when people know what to do. She indicated that one gap that surfaced repeatedly during that discussion involved the people that she interacted with not feeling that they had access to leaders, who are perceived as having the power and agency to make change, but perhaps themselves may not feel empowered to make those changes for a variety of reasons. She indicated that leaders can have barriers that restrict their ability to translate knowledge to action

successfully and to enact change. Some barriers include policies, resource limitations, low morale, topic fatigue and backlash, and limited time to think with intention and learn from peers. The last point is something she regularly hears from leaders: they are busy, overwhelmed, not trained to cover particular topics, and do not have time to think critically about best practices or how to move forward. “This is a big part of what we are hoping to create for you all today,” she said; “we all have the ability to lead, regardless of the role we hold.”

At the conclusion of Black’s remarks, both in-person and virtual attendees, including students and postdoctoral scholars, met in breakout groups aligned with their role and their area of interest or expertise. They were asked to use their action plans⁹ to identify and discuss the fundamental challenges and barriers facing their individual campuses.

REFLECTIONS FROM FIRST BREAKOUT SESSION ON DEFINING INSTITUTIONAL GOALS

Following the first breakout session, in-person and online groups shared some of their takeaways. One of the key points was the need for “pre-action,” planning before you act to ensure buy-in with others, said Denise Simmons (University of Florida). One of the action plan steps discussed in Simmons’s group was developing a clear communication strategy for both senior leadership and their audiences that is clear on the differences among well-being, mentorship, and professional development.

Peter Harries (North Carolina State University) discussed his group’s focus on the importance of community among administrators, faculty, and students at various institutions, especially the impact of campus depopulation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the changing dynamics from unionization. One of the online groups discussed how to get an already overburdened faculty engaged in mentorship, as well as how to reward faculty for good mentorship and have clear definitions and agreements for the mentor/mentee relationship.

Nina Davis (North Carolina Agricultural and Technical [A&T] State University) shared her group’s discussion of the disconnect among what students’ actual needs were outside the classroom versus what they perceived those needs to be. Davis’s group also discussed what the “sense of belonging” and buy-in looks like when institutions diversify the faculty and staff pool and are inclusive during hiring practices. Another group questioned the notion of translating emerging or best practices into implementation, especially considering a dearth of funding and coordination. They also discussed considering an equity lens for groups who have historically received little to no formal mentoring and how to make sure they are receiving the mentoring they need.

LIGHTNING TALKS: IDENTIFYING AND ADDRESSING CHALLENGES AND BARRIERS

During this workshop session, three panelists each provided short (5- to 7-minute) “lightning” talks, followed by a Q&A discussion. Sharon Milgram (National Institutes of Health [NIH] Office of Intramural Training and Education) offered perspectives on challenges and barriers related to mentorship, professional development, and well-being. She began by describing six underlying principles she follows:

1. Trust and boundary setting in and out of research groups to help individuals navigate between very personal and very professional interactions.
2. A culture of life-long learning to stay abreast of current issues.
3. Clear messages from the institution, refined on a regular basis, particularly about well-being, mental health, and reporting bad behavior.
4. Iterative policy development for continued growth and improvement.
5. Extra support for emerging mentors and mentors under stress (e.g., someone coming up for tenure or dealing with a family crisis).
6. Acknowledging this work is the responsibility of leaders, but also everyone else in the community.

Milgram’s NIH team has developed several interventions, including the “Becoming a Resilient Scientist” series.¹⁰

She realized faculty needed to be exposed to this curriculum, which led to the “Raising a Resilient Scientist” series.¹¹ While the tool kit model worked for students, faculty did not want a 4-week engagement; they wanted a 1-hour, on-demand coaching session, which is now available. These large feeder programs draw people in early, and the goal is to destigmatize the need to take care of their health and well-being. This is where messengers matter, she said: “If Francis Collins [former director of the NIH] will sit in an interview with me and talk about his fears early in his career, it makes it easy for a student to do it now.”

Her team undertakes climate assessments of lab environments. Examples they found of healthy lab environments include taking walks instead of happy hours, and meeting intentionally with everyone both individually and in small groups to provide a sense of safety. They also saw a need to address conflict within lab groups. If the principal investigator (PI) is averse to conflict and does not address bullying and harassment in their group, another member of the group who witnesses those actions but does not intervene may help perpetuate them, even if that is not their intent.

The Occupational Depression Inventory fielded by Milgram’s team shows that both toxic work environments and overworked environments drive a lack of well-being. This point is especially important, she said. “Burnout is a driver of all of the issues that we face. We all overwork and do it with pride and our culture drives that.”

Christine Pfund (University of Wisconsin–Madison [UW–Madison]) described how the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) works with organizations and institutions on mentorship. During these consultations, they focus on four areas. The first is access. “So many mentoring programs fail because they never get their mentors and mentees to actually meet,” she said. Some concrete, small things leaders can do to improve access are expanding concepts of mentorship to include having a directory of mentors available to students and encouraging students to engage in their disciplinary societies to expand their networks. The second is quality. This is the space where mentorship education and training matter, Pfund said. The third is continuous improvement, which includes having evidence-based assessments for mentoring and similar programs and appointing a committee to develop criteria around quality mentorship, well-being, and professional development. The final area is value and visibility, specifically, functionally acknowledging and rewarding mentoring work, making sure those rewards are visible, and celebrating evidence-based mentoring practices. Centralized support for student mentoring is also important, however even in the most decentralized organizations, tracking mentors who have effective practices and who are offering mentee training across the institution can be done.

Sometimes, even when institutions offer strong programs, students and postdoctoral scholars do not attend, Cynthia Fuhrmann (University of Massachusetts [UMass] Chan Medical School) said, because in research, we fail to sufficiently foster a culture where self-care and professional development are recognized as a core element of being a successful scientist. Leaders can help shape that message by recognizing that everyone brings their own lived experiences and strengths to the table. Too often professional development is structured from the mentor’s perspective of “this worked for me,” she said. An alternate approach might use evidence-based practices to inform professional development in more inclusive ways such as developing core resources and partnering with individuals on their mentorship strategies.

When the UMass Chan launched career development programs, the training was directly integrated into the curriculum, she said. It was not just a single course, but sprinkled through the years in a staged way to meet students where they are. In addition, they started the Investigator Career Advancement Program (iCAP), a program for tenure-track faculty when they are just getting research groups started. The program develops skills for inclusive leadership early, connecting faculty with evidence-based mentorship practices and coaching support.

Questions

Following the talks, Sonali Majumdar (Princeton University) asked the panelists’ advice on implementing faculty development programs across departments when disciplinary cultures are different and buy-in is variable. Mil-

gram said she does not worry about differences, as there is a set of core principles: developing communication and active listening skills, basic mental health knowledge, how to give feedback, and so on. Perfection was getting in the way, so they decided to stop trying to be everything for everybody.

One participant noted that chairs have great influence on a department’s climate and culture, but “chairs come and go.” She asked how to make sure that culture does not just go away amid turnover. Milgram responded by saying she writes a lot of policy, but she also advised to develop a cadre of people supporting those policies, so even when there is new leadership there are many “ambassadors” sustaining these programs. At UW–Madison’s new chairs’ boot camp, Pfund said, they ask chairs to illustrate their understanding of how mentoring works in their department and why. This helps them understand the rationale for how and why things are currently done, so if they choose to change something or drop it, it comes from a place of understanding.

Another participant asked Milgram about training and principles for boundary setting. Milgram noted that using a set of questions for self-reflection can aid in determining if sharing something would be helpful to a relationship. She offered sample questions, such as: Why am I sharing this? What is the implication of sharing this? What will happen if I do not? While she understands that many PI’s feel responsible to help postdocs find a job, Milgram noted that she has not met a single PI trained in career development or as a career counselor. Instead, she suggested that PIs might be better served by referring their postdocs to institutional offices (e.g., career development and student wellness) or other student groups that could help postdocs in their job search and other needs.

Anita Corbett (Emory University) asked how to encourage people who need mentorship but do not have the agency to seek it out, especially considering equity concerns and when matching mentors and mentees is not successful. Fuhrmann said that by bringing these topics into the curriculum, they saw a big step forward to equity. There was initial pushback from students to this additional requirement, but afterward, some said they would not have felt comfortable asking their research advisor for permission to participate if the training had been optional. A simpler step is role modeling, Fuhrmann said, e.g., talking about your own beneficial experiences, including professional development workshops you have attended, and forwarding emails to students and postdocs about different opportunities that might be a good fit for their interest.

Amy Price (Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth) asked online how to mitigate the “survival of the fittest” attitude when institutions are struggling financially and people are on competitive contracts that renew yearly and cannot focus on these initiatives. Milgram said allyship, the active support of a marginalized group from a non-member, is really important in this regard. “Institutions that have deeper pockets need to share with institutions that do not.” For example, resources can be shared over Zoom, as was done during the pandemic. Fuhrmann emphasized that federal agencies have invested in funding initiatives to make more things open access and easier to adopt, including the NIH’s Office of Intramural Training and Education, the Professional Development Hub,¹² and the Postdoc Academy^.13

FRAMING PRESENTATION: CONNECTING EQUITABLE ACCESS AND INCLUSIVE CLIMATE

Following the lightning talk Q&A, Julie Posselt’s (University of Southern California) presentation sought to connect two high-profile, high-interest issues: equitable access to higher education and inclusive climate to the traditional roles in organizational culture and learning. An “uncomfortable truth,” she said, is that the mindsets about merit typically lead to selection practices that are by definition, exclusive, not inclusive. These “normalizing” mindsets continue to affect mentees after hiring, reproducing the next generation of gatekeepers and inequalities.

Her research on organizational culture has been motivated by unpacking a tension in the literature between institutions espousing strong commitments to diversity, versus evidence demonstrating that the way merit is operationalized in selective doctoral admissions undermines those goals. In earlier work, she observed strong

preferences for candidates who met criteria faculty believed to be rooted in beliefs that were important to their own success, as well as processes that valued efficiency with “as little conflict as possible.” The preference toward “collegiality” also prevents the “uncomfortable conversations” that would lead to the development of more inclusive climates. She also found clear patterns of homophily or preference for self-similarity, including in disciplinary cultures, as well as broad ambivalence with organizational change at large.

As she has continued this work, she finds that the disciplinary cultures in some institutions provided the raw material for making change. “Culture is often called upon as something we need to change, and it is true,” Posselt said, but the same disciplinary logics could also give people a sense of common values around making efforts to change.

Across STEM, “scripted” mindsets about what is necessary for excellence often uphold the status quo, she said, creating climates that may be numerically diverse, but “patently unhealthy” and exclusive. Some mindset examples include the notion that science should be a “sink or swim” environment or that challenge is good, but support is for the weak. Posselt also found a very common attitude of race evasiveness: science is supposed to be objective, and racism is political; therefore, “racism is not really our business.” Because these mindsets are socially constructed, they can also be reconstructed, she said. Research from institutional theory says that exogenous shocks and other upheavals can lead institutions to make decisive and transformative changes that members might otherwise resist, but they require organizational learning.

Posselt identified four case studies on organizational learning from her research over the past several years that connect access and climate. In the first study on broadening the definition of merit in holistic review, her team was able to observe admissions committees in the physical sciences striving to increase diversity in spite of being in states that had affirmative action bans. In one example, a department experienced significant drops in student diversity following the passage of a ban. With the leadership of two men of color in the doctorate program, they began a decade-long effort to advance diversity. This included having self-critical conversations, broadening ideas about merit, and learning from graduate students who served on an admissions committee and who sought to amplify community as a value.

Posselt’s team noticed that the phrase “status quo” was a common way that admissions committees communicated they were unimpressed by some applicants. From further observations and interviews, the team was able to infer that “status quo” meant students with a high grade point average, first author publications, and participation in activities that made them appear as ideal candidates. “But status quo excellence was not enough,” Posselt said; “rather, they were also looking for graduate students who could amplify and contribute to a high-quality learning environment.” Student members of the committee led the way on this value, including the student who said her evaluation of all applicants included the central question: Does this person value having a community? The committee added questions to the interview protocol and evaluation rubric to reflect this concern.

Posselt added that it might be easier to create a large-scale organizational climate by centering and embodying community. Leaders in this institution amplified student voices in specific ways: they noticed when they themselves overspoke and apologized for it, and accepted that some degree of discomfort and candid conversations would be necessary for them to get to an inclusive and diverse student body.

Posselt’s second case study discussed how academic pedigree operates in trust networks. The default attitudes about who can be trusted and who constitutes a risk often reflect an ingrained bias against less selective institutions, and in some arguments, are actively racialized, Posselt said. Her team conducted a social network analysis of the Cal-Bridge program, a doctoral pathway program linking community colleges and California State institutions with the University of California (UC) system. They studied where alumni of this program applied, were admitted, and enrolled over seven application cycles.

The UC Irvine physics and astronomy program developed a successful method for alumni enrollment. Posselt’s team conducted an ethnographic case study of this department to understand how UC Irvine came to play such a prominent role, and found the outcome was part

of a decade-long institutional change effort that followed from a desire to both grow the size of the program and increase its diversity. In addition to a supportive faculty and a larger university-wide inclusive excellence program, the particular changes in this department included eliminating Graduate Record Examination (GRE) requirements and adopting rubric-based admissions. Mentoring faculty learned to trust new kinds of applicant profiles as they saw Cal-Bridge scholars enroll and successfully matriculate in their program, but students also learned they could develop trust in this program and in the advising apparatus there. The Cal-Bridge alumni now in the doctoral program could vouch for it to those debating about where they should apply and enroll. The pathways of trust go both ways, Posselt highlighted; they are a function of whom we grant access to, but also where student networks encourage one another to enroll.

In a third case study, a series of failed tenure cases for women in a chemistry department at a prominent flagship state university led to its sinking reputation, ranking, and morale. With support from the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE program,¹⁴ they looked seriously at all their data for hiring, tenure, and promotion, and started to make systematic changes to their evaluation and hiring practices, Posselt said.

The department shifted from the idea of hiring women for diversity to hiring women into the intellectual core of the department, as the former had the potential to marginalize faculty. They also paid attention to the cues they were sending during recruitment weekends and during the hiring and admission process by eliminating GRE requirements; conducting thoughtful systematic reviews of every applicant; and making sure faculty members who had relevant expertise were reviewing applicants. This is an example of the theory of double-loop organizational learning, Posselt said—not only making changes to what they do, but also questioning the foundations of why they do it. Revisiting fundamental goals, values, and beliefs allowed them to develop more sophisticated strategies that resulted in more enduring outcomes.

Posselt characterized her final case on the Diversity Project, an initiative of UCLA’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology program in partnership with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), as one of the “most visionary efforts I have seen in STEM doctoral education.” This 12-student research summer program also offers training in swimming and scuba diving, a major asset in providing access to fieldwork in marine biology. It is motivated by the history of racial segregation in public pools and disparity in access to swimming lessons among Black and Latine children.

The program also actively rewrote scripts about research and marine biology in their messaging and training, Posselt said, including focusing on possibilities (“Anyone can be a marine scientist”) rather than excellence as exclusive, setting students up for proactive support and well-being (“You are more important than any data”) and building in redundancies to ensure everyone felt safe underwater. In contrast to what is typical in STEM, they affirmed Blackness and talked about colonialism. Rewriting exclusionary scripts in science helps “create more imaginative and thriving futures for us and for our students,” she said. It is really important to remember learning is necessary but not sufficient, she added, and there is a need for hard conversations and building trust with people and organizations, including minority-serving institutions, that may or may not have a perceived strong standing among the faculty in participants’ institutions.

Questions

Following the presentation, Justin Wang (Scripps Research Institute), a fellow in the Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship Program at the National Academies, asked Posselt how to intentionally include more student and postdoc voices, especially in places where leaders may not be sure about the practice. Ambivalence and lack of prior experience needs to be acknowledged and managed, Posselt said, noting this kind of effort can be a habit or practice before it becomes a formal policy. She has seen a number of universities where the inclusion of graduate students on admissions committees was treated as an experiment. “If you have a leader who is confident about trying it at the committee level, they will be more likely to engage the process in a way that’s mindful and affirming, than if it is being done on a pressure basis,” she said. She has

also seen committees include doctoral students closest to graduating, so they are not evaluating someone within their own cohort.

Rebekah Layton (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) asked how to share evidence-based methods to practitioners and administration members who do not have time to be experts or are not in behavioral fields. Posselt noted that her team creates “Reader’s Digest” versions of important papers and synthesis on certain topics. She has also seen departments starting faculty meetings with a 10–15 minute discussion of a recent paper or digest. By making it normal to talk about the social science of these issues where faculty are already gathering, they become more confident and literate in these topics.

At the conclusion of the Q&A session, participants began their second breakout session in which they identified partners and allies who they could collaborate with to advance their developing action plan.

REFLECTIONS FROM SECOND BREAKOUT SESSION ON IDENTIFYING STAKEHOLDERS

During the second breakout session, one group discussed the need to identify potential stakeholders (e.g., deans, department chairs, and directors) to help move action plans forward and build trust while also avoiding alignment with the status quo, said Stephanie Luster-Teasley Pass (North Carolina A&T State University). Since the focus was on senior leaders, she also highlighted the need for administrators to dig deeper, to see and hear a broader range of people, in order to implement the right strategies.

Kate McDaniel (Duke University) shared her group’s discourse about identifying and filling gaps among various systems and the steps required to make improvements. This included recognizing different ways to engage faculty leaders who are moving things forward, identifying allies at the provost, dean, and chair level, and trying to embrace iterative change as a normal part of the process. Melissa Burt (Colorado State University), session moderator, agreed and noted it “takes a lot of time” to build trust and community around these issues.

A group of leaders from nonprofits that support academic institutions discussed how to reach graduate students and faculty who are in most need of resources but do not know how to engage. Michael Smith (National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates [NAMEPA]) observed that students who are the recipients of these resources can also be leveraged to engage broader communities through student affinity groups, since trust and community are already built into those activities. Since the NAMEPA is connected to both students and practitioners as members of the organization, Smith believes that the NAMEPA has a unique opportunity to support, educate, and guide these individuals if they can understand their constituents needs within the broader ecosystem.

Finally, one of the online groups suggested department staff as an often forgotten group who support programs, faculty, and students, as well as community members who are equal stakeholders to administration and industry partners.

KEYNOTE: LEADERSHIP AS AN ADAPTIVE FRAMEWORK

Unlike science disciplines with an agreed set of principles and definition of terms, books on leadership use the same terms differently, sometimes in conflicting or contradictory ways, said Ronald Heifetz (Harvard University). In response, he has sought to develop several bodies of knowledge around leadership. First, foundational principles of the discipline, including definitions, postulates, and propositions that have some internal consistency and have the power to explain the quality of leadership in organizations and in society. Second, how to properly diagnose systems as both an observer and a participant, including how leaders are succeeding or failing to wrestle with key challenges. Third, how to develop an internal framework, wrestling with one’s own predispositions, prejudices, and biases in order to approach the world with diagnostic integrity and strategic thoughtfulness. Finally, educational strategies and concepts for teaching leadership, especially as an area of practice.

“In the classroom I try to meet students at the moment that they are in,” he said, including studying their own efforts to make a difference. Heifetz views leadership as a line of work and as a practice, instead of a personal characteristic or simply having authority in a system. The abilities of leadership include: listening, improvisational

ability, tolerance for conflict, and capacity to keep one’s bearings and values even when feeling swamped, he said.

Viewing leadership as a practice also introduces the question about what kind of work leadership is: What is the domain of problems? Leadership has to distinguish whether a problem is technical, adaptive, or a mix of the two. Technical problems are amenable to existing expertise and an established knowledge base that help us arrive at a solution in a routine way. At the other end of this spectrum are adaptive problems from unexpected challenges and forces. In nature, organisms manage adaptive challenges by selecting through diversity in the gene population; in other words, they either adapt to develop new capacity or risk perishing, he said.

A leader’s first step, he said, is to diagnose which part of a problem is technical and which part is adaptive. Distinguishing the type of leadership problem from the assigned authority of the leadership title allows those in the middle of an organization, in lateral positions, or senior leaders to practice leadership by placing the focus on specific questions.

Authority figures are under enormous pressure to provide solutions to problems and often self-identify as problem-solvers. Saying a problem is going to require everyone to make changes “is a harder sell in organizational life,” Heifetz said. Adaptive challenges also benefit from leadership asking what is essential and precious to hold on to amid change. A common mistake of leadership is being so excited about the change they want to make that there is no focus on what they do not want to change, he said. Adaptive processes are also improvisational, starting with a plan and then asking where we are now within each moment and taking corrective action.

Leaders have to identify the losses and distribute them. “Leadership would be an easy job if it were all about distributing gains,” he said. Aside from some win-win solutions, most of the time there are losses that need to be distributed, absorbed, and accepted. This includes the loss of competence. Often people will want to stay in the area of their existing competence, rather than moving across that frontier where they learn and discover new capacity, he said.

The time frames of adaptive challenges are different as well, and stress is distributed differently. Leadership involves holding people through a sustained period of disequilibrium, requiring an inclination, and the skills, for handling conflict and holding people within a productive range of stress without pushing them to panic, he said. It also takes time for people to process losses and generate experimentations to create robust innovation.

Black asked Heifetz how leaders can help maintain notions of well-being in spaces that are “turbulent with change.” Distinguishing leadership from authority allows us to ask that question from all different vantage points within the university system, Heifetz said, but at the most personal level, we have to anchor ourselves to avoid panic or a defensive mode of operating.

He suggested three basic anchoring devices. First, confidantes that do not have competing stakes in the problem should discuss it and help organize themselves. Second is finding a “sanctuary.” It does not have to be any particular kind—a park bench, a place of worship, etcetera. Third, is developing a regular practice, such as writing poetry, riding a bike, playing piano, whatever it may be “that helps us restore ourselves to ourselves” and rediscover the capacity to start listening again. A simple indicator of when someone is at risk of making a diagnostic mistake is when their empathy or curiosity plummets, he said, and returning to these anchors helps them leave a defensive mode. Black added this also applies to bias, as much of the research shows that once you slow down and are more intentional, the less likely you are to enact biases in your work.

To get beyond defensiveness one has to go beyond trusted colleagues and reach out to people who are much farther away but may have some interesting ideas, Heifetz said. One of the prime casualties of defensive operations is someone losing sight of what they are all about and focusing on the “rules of the game”—academic freedom, violations of policy, and discrimination policies. These are critically important, he said, but they are not “the game,” which is educating students.

Questions

Fátima Sancheznieto (UW–Madison) asked Heifetz to speak more about empowerment of leadership when the

structures are not top-down, but rather bottom-up, or there is no direct authority at all. Heifetz described a concept called “modulating the provocation”; leading from below means people more senior to you may see you as a resource or an irritant. By modulating the level of irritation you cause, based on how much tolerance the system has for that provocation, you avoid invoking a defensive reaction, such as silencing you, he said. This is its own art form. Ideally you want to find partners in authority positions who are willing to take advantage of the noise you make or questions you ask.

Mark Moldwin (University of Michigan) asked how to manage meaningful change along longer timelines in an environment of semesters and short tenures of deans and presidents. Part of leadership is planning for a successor, Heifetz said. Part of their preparation should be identifying who will carry this on, and how to institutionalize the work with the humility to know that the issues we care about will likely not be finished by us.

An online participant asked what happens when a person’s capacity for risk is different from their institution. Being analytical about risk is important, Heifetz said. What is the actual risk you are facing? Public embarrassment, a bad newspaper article, harm, or hurting someone’s feelings? Identifying the actual risks and our capacity to absorb them helps to understand which risks we are willing to take on behalf of students’ education.

A risk of bringing in new people is that some people will be upset, he said. Generating more diversity in a population invites awkwardness and hurt feelings, and it takes time for people to get beyond that. We have to hold them through that period of disequilibrium and tolerate risks that people are going to complain about each other, on their way to compassion. “If we are too risk averse, we will never get there,” he said.

LIGHTNING TALKS: PROMOTING MENTORSHIP AND WELL-BEING

Louis J. Muglia (Burroughs Wellcome Fund) began the second series of brief “lightning” talks to discuss the fund’s investment in mentorship. Muglia himself was an awardee of the fund’s career development award in the biomedical sciences in 1995. It was not about the money, but about the mentorship, the community and the career and growth opportunities that sprang from it, he said. Burroughs Wellcome thinks of themselves not just as a funder “but a networking organization; a community-building organization; a mentoring committee of senior mentors, near-peer mentors, and peer mentors.”

Their longest-standing national program for diversity and mentorship is the postdoctoral diversity enrichment program, which now funds 25 postdocs per year in partnership with their faculty mentors. Despite controversy and pullback from recognizing diversity, the fund has not changed its stance, he said, and is even more committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. They have learned from Shirley Malcom of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s SEA Change initiative that many institutions want to recruit diverse postdoctoral fellows and faculty members but are not really prepared to support them properly.

The fund wants to reach back earlier and earlier into the pipeline, convening communities whose members have not historically been broadly encouraged to think of themselves as potential scientists. Their experience can help answer questions that are not just scientific questions of interest but are also community questions of interest, he said. It really starts in K–12 education, which the fund is invested in through building teacher capacity to be mentors to students.

Another way they approach this is tracking the diversity component of every grant they fund. Right now, 50 percent of the grants they fund are dedicated to African American, Hispanic, and Indigenous populations in the Americas. They look forward to expanding that even further, aiming for 70 percent of funding to go to investigators from historically underrepresented groups.

In 2017, the teaching and learning committee at Harvey Mudd College was setting its agenda for the year when a committee member had a nagging pedagogy question, said Laura Palucki Blake (Harvey Mudd College). Why were students’ impressions of their own academic ability and performance often so much lower than the reality? The committee member was concerned this was limiting engagement in the classroom.

To find the answer to that question, they interviewed students, who were “brutally honest and forthright with us.” The pressure of taking five or six classes a semester,

some with related labs, plus tutoring and collaborative homework necessary to do well “left them with little time to care for themselves, much less to think about growth and learning,” she said. Students’ physical and emotional health were being harmed by the pressure to be extraordinary and achieve more than was expected. This led faculty to ask where the students were getting this message. “You know the answer: Hi, it’s me. I’m the problem. It’s me,” Palucki Blake said. In other words, the faculty’s own culture of “more” served as an obstacle to the aspirations they had for wellness.

Harvey Mudd undertook efforts to address well-being for faculty, students, and staff, but Palucki Blake talked specifically about the faculty part of this work. They had purposeful discussions at every level, up to and including the Board of Trustees. Those conversations made it clear how close to maximum capacity their “normal” practices were. Faculty survey data also indicated a high degree of uncertainty about expectations for tenure, especially around scholarship, she said.

They intentionally decided to make the tenure guidelines more flexible, Palucki Blake said, allowing faculty to be comfortable including broad categories of work, including scholarship on teaching and learning; collaborative and interdisciplinary work; or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in their dossier. “We want to see the things that make you a complete academic,” she said. This is paired with a lot of messaging about the changes and sharing tenure rates for each department, easing the pressure on achieving tenure and making the vagueness more comfortable.

Harvey Mudd created an office of sponsored research and piloted additional summer salary support for faculty with undergraduate researchers. They have also reevaluated their committee structure: “If your committee is just a committee that meets and talks about stuff, it is gone,” she said. Finally, they created service sabbaticals for DEI work and centered all of these efforts in their reaffirmation. “That held us accountable in a really public way,” she said, allowing projects to take hold because accreditors were going to ask about it. None of this happened by accident, Palucki Blake said. You have to make time, be intentional, create spaces to innovate, and give yourself permission to talk about well-being and follow up with action.

As Sara Xayarath Hernández (Cornell University) and her team engaged in systemic change around graduate education, they started by thinking about how to make their values apparent in every part of the system. If they are transparent and clear how their values connect to the scholarship priorities and core competencies they are seeking, then their goals and learning outcomes should show up in selection protocols and rubrics, she said. “If we say we value something, then we should be able to demonstrate how we are operationalizing those values and who we’re bringing into our organizations.”

As part of becoming a member institution of the Equity in Graduate Education Consortium, Cornell had to assess which six academic programs would be engaged in that consortium work. They prioritized programs ready to engage, even if they were not far along. Part of assessing readiness was leadership investment in the program and the broader sphere of influence of the department’s academic leaders, and how they might influence another program to engage equally in the work, she said.

As they started thinking about inclusive mentoring, they recognized it was not just about graduate education but also about preparing faculty to be better mentors to early career colleagues. The foundation of this work became the Faculty Advancing Inclusive Mentoring (FAIM) Resource Center.¹⁵ The FAIM framework has key principles for inclusive mentoring, including making sure the relationship is co-constructed and reciprocal, strengths based, identity informed, and the mentor and mentee are working together for mutual development and growth.

They also have a host of practical tools and resources for mentors and mentees, including a shared expectations agreement plan, a worksheet to define values, and how to share expectations within a research group. This encourages people to think about not just how they work one-on-one but also how they are working as a collective group, she said. They have made everything publicly accessible in an effort to contribute to the collective work more broadly.

Questions

Mary Ellen Lane (UMass Chan Medical School) asked Palucki Blake how the new tenure guidelines were working, given that “cynical view” tenure standards are often vague to allow committees to do whatever they want.

These standards for tenure and promotion have been in place for two cycles now and were approved by a faculty vote, Palucki Blake said. It has gone well so far, but it is a work in progress. The stress from putting together a tenure or promotion dossier has significantly decreased, and conversations about what is appropriate for the dossier are more pervasive, she said. It is still a stressful event, but they wanted to have people realize they do not need to publish seven articles in the next 2 years in order to feel ready.

Fuhrmann thanked the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for “helping people see that change can happen by funding people doing the work.” She asked Muglia to comment more on the roles of funders and the type of funding mechanisms they use. He noted that commitment to things like awards for trainee career guidance helps people realize they do not have to fit in a narrow box for their careers, exploring beyond the boundaries of traditional academia. The fund wants to help build careers where people are passionate about the question, not just about meeting traditional metrics.

CONCLUSION AND SYNTHESIS

Action Plans and Takeaways

Amanda Shaver (Johns Hopkins University) led participants in sharing the action plans they had developed during the breakout sessions throughout the day. Some of the next steps, key takeaways, and action plans included the following:

• Retaining and promoting BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and women faculty across divisions (e.g., implementing pilot mentorship matrices and competency clusters and partnering with faculty of color networks and other organizations)
• Setting up scalable education training programs (e.g., proposal development programs for students)
• Reaching out to colleagues at other institutions about assessment of individual development plan (IDP) metrics
• Generating and sharing a synthesis of available mentorship resources within their team and building relationships among related departmental-level mentorship programs
• Restructuring the admissions review process to develop better structural parameters that align values with rankings. This includes broadening the sense of what merit means to various stakeholders (e.g., chairs, faculty members on the committee and at large, etc.)Using CIMER curriculum for mentorship training
• Making a mentorship academy sustainable beyond the budget expiration by using assessment data feedback from students to convince senior leadership of its value
• Revamping a faculty hiring initiative by first identifying relevant chairs to collaborate in writing a new proposal
• Defining and operationalizing core competencies for faculty and students by building them into existing assessments and creating new ones as necessary.

Synthesis: Getting Authority to Enable Leaders

Hironao Okahana (American Council on Education) said participants’ action plans highlighted that “leadership and authority are not synonymous,” but it is important for positional authority to empower and enable those leading and implementing this work.

For Okahana, a recurring theme of the workshop was time. Time enables and empowers us to do this work, and time is a gift those in positional authority may be able to give us, he said. This includes time to feel safe enough to be vulnerable while doing this work, and time to learn and iterate in both individual and organizational learning. Scientific discovery builds on iterative processes and continuous learning and that should be the same for individual leaders and organizations, he said. Change takes time too, especially the kind of transformation needed in culture change, which is not always easily measured. Collectively embracing the notion that courtesy and civility can coexist with discomfort or uncomfortable conversations is what scientific discourse is all about, he said. This is another area where people in positional authority can step up, helping to increase viability of these action plans.

While no specific decisions on future actions were made, Okahana closed the workshop by saying that he wanted to “make sure this is not a one-and-done conversation.”

DISCLAIMER This Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief was prepared by Taylor Kate Brown and Melissa E. Wynn as a factual summary of what occurred at the meeting. The committee’s role was limited to planning the event. The statements made are those of the individual workshop participants and do not necessarily represent the views of all participants; the planning committee; or the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

PLANNING COMMITTEE Anita H. Corbett, Emory University (Cochair); Hironao Okahana, American Council on Education (Cochair); Sherilynn Black, Duke University; Melissa A. Burt, Colorado State University; Cynthia Fuhrmann, UMass Chan Medical School; Eve Higginbotham, University of Pennsylvania; Amanda Shaver, Johns Hopkins University; and Jeremy A. Magruder Waisome, University of Florida.

REVIEWERS To ensure that it meets institutional standards for quality and objectivity, this Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief was reviewed by Joan Gallos, Wheelock College; Shana Lassiter, Duke University; Sonali Majumdar, Princeton University; and Briana McIntyre, National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. Marilyn Baker, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, served as the review coordinator.

SPONSORS This workshop was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

To watch the recorded webcast of the event, see: https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/42345_04-2024_empowering-senior-leaders-in-developing-an-equitable-higher-education-research-ecosystem-a-workshop.

SUGGESTED CITATION National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. Empowering Senior Higher Education Leaders in Developing an Equitable Research Ecosystem: Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/28908.