NSF Impact IT Partnership Grant Continues to Make Progress

AIS leadership, executive staff, and members continue to work on the three-year NSF partnership Impact IT grant led by Principal Investigator, Eleanor Loiacono, and Co-Principal Investigators, Lakshmi Iyer, Elizabeth Long Lingo, Michelle Carter, and Adriane Randolph. In year one, this core team created three working groups to address the grant goals of 1) addressing the lack of gender equity within IS academia, 2) increasing the number of women, especially at the rank of full professor, and 3) catalyzing action and fostering accountability around supporting women’s efforts to advance to full. The working groups included a Data Group, Self-Assessment Group, and Best Practices Group. Care was paid in composing each group to involve individuals who both were key stakeholders in AIS – to ensure future buy-in and thus impact, accountability, and sustainability – but also those who had intersectional identities. Each working group met five times via Zoom between March and August 2021.

The Data Group worked closely with the AIS membership director to review data currently being collected, where gaps may be in data collection, and how data collection could be enhanced in the future. Based on this, questions not solicited in the past were suggested to include in the AIS annual membership survey conducted in fall 2021. The Self-Assessment Group identified high-level criteria based on the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) SEA Change Model to start creating a self-assessment tool. The group tentatively rank ordered AIS processes to explore and decided on two processes to pilot self-assessments on in year two. The Best Practices Group engaged in the process of reviewing and assessing a range of best practices that other Business- and STEMM-related associations are using with their members. The key outcomes were to identify practices most pertinent to AIS and to generate a list of options to pursue in the short- and long-term. In fall 2021, meetings took place with cross-functional members of each working group to discuss integrated initiatives for year two.

In addition to the three working groups, 34 interviews were conducted with IT academics from 16 countries and all AIS regions, including participants from North and South America, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and Africa. Interviews provided insight into ways to support women and underrepresented faculty in their trajectory toward promotion to full professor (or the equivalent rank in other academic promotion systems) and to reduce systemic bias within AIS and the IT field. These insights were used to inform initiatives in year two.

In addition to the working groups and interviews, the grant’s core team met with its Advisory Board in spring and fall of 2021 to inform the board of activities to date and to solicit input and guidance. The board is composed of past AIS leadership, an AAAS Sea Change leader, an implicit bias mitigation expert, and a PI of another NSF ADVANCE grant. The core team also met with an external evaluator several times who interviewed various stakeholders to provide the core team with valuable insights and suggestions for future direction.

In year two of the grant, the following initiatives are being pursued: 

Implicit Bias Mitigation
AIS leadership will engage in pilot workshops to explore implicit bias and its mitigation during spring 2022 using workshop scenarios that relate directly to the AIS processes of award committee selection, award criteria, and external letters of promotion writing. Once revised, these workshops will be offered to the greater AIS membership later in years two and three of the grant.

AIS Membership Report
After focusing on what membership data should be collected and used for benchmarking, identifying trends, and positively engaging its member while being mindful of member’s dignity, privacy, security, and legal issues surrounding data collection and use, the focus is on developing recommendations for ongoing collection and periodic dissemination of collecting AIS membership data. Data will be analyzed and made available to members online and at ICIS in December 2022. Additionally, a report on the data collection process will be created and the team will present recommendations for review to the AIS Council, who will be in charge of approval and implementing necessary changes to ensure recommended data is collected.

AIS DEI Self-Assessment process & framework
The self-assessment process will begin by looking closely into two processes within AIS: 1) how award committees are composed and awards are decided and 2) how conference committees are composed and conference proposals are reviewed and accepted/rejected. Once completed, recommendations for criteria to enhance such processes towards more equitable participation and transparent processes will be presented to the AIS Council.

AIS member service acknowledgement certificates
Certificates to recognize (through a written record) service to the AIS community, such as SIG, college, and chapter leadership, as well as conference committee members and other AIS service roles created by AIS.

New community mid-career award 
The core team will work with AIS leadership to discuss creating a new award to recognize mid-career professionals

“Springboard Your Career” workshops
Senior faculty will be recruited from around the world to serve as catalysts who will recruit and provide training to small groups of early and mid-career faculty. These small groups will be local to regions/countries or be focused on AIS Chapters, thereby centering the academic promotion ladder that is relevant for junior faculty moving forward in their respective academic promotion contexts.

AIS Associate Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
A new position for of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion was created in 2020. An advisory board under this office has been established which will work with grant personnel towards increasing the intersectional diversity of AIS. This position will work towards sustaining grant initiatives once the grant term ends.

Please visit https://impactit.pages.wm.edu/ to learn more.