Our NSF ADVANCE Partnership project, CEAN, focuses on building awareness and understanding of exclusionary behaviors in the academic workplace, and enabling effective intervention through bystander training.

The specific objectives of CEAN are to:

1. increase individual and organizational awareness and understanding of the culture and climate within Colleges of Engineering across the UC system, particularly as they affect women and in the context of intersectionality;
2. develop organizational leaders, allies, and co-conspirators from the departments and colleges to provide bystander intervention training for all faculty and to model behaviors that promote equity and inclusion;
3. empower faculty to apply bystander intervention strategies that promote positive organizational culture and climate, encourage equitable attitudes, and facilitate systemic change; and,
4. elucidate the intersectional experiences of underrepresented faculty and resistance to change among overrepresented faculty.

We have co-developed bystander intervention workshop materials with our NSF ADVANCEGeo partners and trained faculty within the Bourns College of Engineering to serve as facilitators during bystander intervention scenario practice. We have led bystander intervention workshops for BCOE faculty. We will be extending our methods and workshops across the UC system and our professional organizations. 

These efforts will result in:

1. increased understanding and adoption of strategies by engineering faculty across the UC system for identifying and addressing exclusionary practices;
2. an intervention model that can be used in multiple higher education contexts to promote equity and inclusion of STEM faculty, staff, and students;
3. a network of organizational leaders from departments within COE’s across the UC system who are committed to modeling equity and inclusion, and connected through this project to our ADVANCEGeo and NSF INCLUDES partners and their networks; and,
4. improved culture and climate for COE faculty across UCs.