ADVANCE: Organizational Change for Gender Equity in STEM Academic Professions | 20 554

Opportunity Information: Apply for 20 554

The National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE program is a grant opportunity focused on improving gender equity in STEM academic careers by changing the systems that shape faculty work and advancement. Rather than funding individual training, fellowships, travel, or research projects for specific people, ADVANCE funds institutions and organizations to identify and fix structural barriers that disadvantage women and other historically underrepresented groups in STEM faculty roles. The overall aim is to strengthen the nationapos;s science and engineering workforce by making academic workplaces more equitable, inclusive, and capable of supporting diverse talent over the long term.

A core idea in this solicitation is that inequity in STEM academia is often produced by organizational systems, not just individual behavior. The opportunity emphasizes that bias and unequal outcomes can be embedded in routine policies, everyday practices, and workplace culture. Examples include departments that distribute service loads or heavy teaching assignments unevenly, which can reduce time for research and slow promotion, or hiring and tenure processes that fail to address implicit bias, leading to systematically less favorable evaluations of women and certain racial and ethnic minorities. Because these problems are systemic, ADVANCE expects projects to pursue systemic (organizational) change strategies, such as redesigning policies, standardizing evaluation processes, improving transparency and accountability, and reshaping norms that influence climate and decision-making.

Another defining requirement is the expectation of intersectional approaches. Proposals are expected to recognize that gender does not operate in isolation; it interacts with race, ethnicity, and other dimensions of identity. In practice, that means applicants should design strategies and evaluation plans that account for how multiple forms of disadvantage can overlap, and should avoid one-size-fits-all interventions that only address gender in the abstract. The program also notes that ADVANCE covers all NSF-supported STEM fields, including the learning, social, behavioral, and economic sciences, while excluding clinical science fields.

The solicitation is organized into four distinct funding tracks, each aimed at a different type or scale of change effort. The Institutional Transformation (IT) track supports institutions of higher education (IHEs) that want to develop, implement, and evaluate innovative, institution-wide systemic change strategies to improve gender equity for STEM faculty. This track is geared toward deep organizational change within a single institution, typically involving coordinated efforts across leadership, departments, policies, and faculty career systems. IT proposals begin with an IT preliminary proposal, and only institutions encouraged by NSF after that review are expected to submit a full IT proposal.

The Adaptation track supports efforts to take strategies that already have evidence behind them and adapt, implement, and evaluate those strategies in a new setting. Adaptation projects can focus on change within an IHE, or they can work outside academia by supporting national or regional STEM disciplinary transformation through nonprofit, non-academic organizations. In other words, Adaptation is about scaling or transferring what has been shown to work, while still requiring thoughtful tailoring and evaluation rather than simple replication.

The Partnership track is intended for broader efforts that enable wide adoption of effective gender equity and systemic change strategies. These projects are expected to have significant reach and to produce national or regional transformation, either across institutions and organizations, within one or more STEM disciplines, or both. Partnership projects are designed for collaborations and networks that can move the field beyond isolated campus-by-campus change by coordinating shared models, resources, and adoption pathways at scale.

The Catalyst track is meant to expand the range of institutions that can participate in ADVANCE by supporting data collection and institutional self-assessment. The emphasis here is on helping IHEs identify where systemic gender inequities exist for their STEM faculty (for example, in workload, recruitment, retention, evaluation, promotion outcomes, and climate), so the institution can plan and carry out targeted reforms. Catalyst projects are essentially a capacity-building entry point for institutions that need structured support to diagnose problems and prepare for more comprehensive change efforts.

From an administrative and funding standpoint, this is a discretionary NSF grant program (CFDA numbers include 47.041, 47.049, 47.050, 47.070, 47.074, 47.075, 47.076, 47.079, and 47.083). The opportunity lists an award ceiling of up to $3,000,000 and an expected number of awards around 36. Submission requirements vary by track: Letters of Intent are required for the Adaptation and Partnership tracks (and submitting one enables submission of a full proposal), while the IT track uses a preliminary proposal process before an invited full proposal. The solicitation also notes that some proposal types are accepted before and after target dates, and that applicants (especially for Catalyst timing) are encouraged to coordinate with the program office.

Overall, this ADVANCE opportunity is best understood as funding organizational reform in STEM academia: using evidence-based, intersectional strategies to change policies, practices, and culture so that hiring, evaluation, workload, promotion, and day-to-day climate no longer systematically disadvantage women and other underrepresented groups, and so that equity becomes part of how institutions and disciplines operate rather than a short-term initiative.

• 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 Mar 07, 2020.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 07, 2020 IT-Preliminary proposal Target Date - preliminary proposals are only required for institutions of higher education that want to submit a full Institutional Transformation proposal. IT-preliminary proposals are accepted before and after the target date. Catalyst proposals #150 Catalyst proposals are accepted before and after the target date. Please contact the program office before submitting a proposal to discuss timing for submission. Institutional Transformation proposals - only IHEs encouraged by NSF after review of an IT-Preliminary proposal should submit a full IT proposal #150 IT proposals are accepted before and after the target date. Partnership and Adaptation full proposal deadline - if you submitted a letter of intent then you can submit the full proposal. Work on the full proposal should have started well before the letter of intent deadline. Letters of Intent are only required for Adaptation and Partnership tracks. Submitting a letter of intent automatically allows you to submit a full proposal. Work on the full proposal should have started well before the letter of intent deadline.. (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 $3,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 36 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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