More than the Sum of Its Parts: Advancing Women at NJIT through Collaborative

Research Networks

The NJIT ADVANCE Project

Funded by a grant fromThe National Science Foundation

“To know who we are, we must understand

how we are connected.”*

PROJECT OVERVIEW

The NJIT ADVANCE Project pioneers the use of social network analysis to affect institutional change and ensure the full participation of women in academic science and engineering.

NJIT ADVANCE Objectives enlarge women faculty’s professional

networks improve information flow stimulate social capital formation

assess the relationship between network structure & career advancement

create new data visualization tools to help faculty manage their networks

transfer sustainable network analysis methods to academic administrators

Universities are more than buildings….

and organization charts….

…They are WEBS of human interaction and perception whose complex structure is largely invisible to the people embedded in them.

We make the

invisible visible.

"The Old Boys Network used to be a metaphor. Now it is a MAP….a highway on which we can track the flow of social capital from one human node to another.”

Leveraging Social Network Data to Support Faculty Mentoring:

Best Practices from NJIT Advance

THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT WOMEN IN STEM

“For the most part, men and women faculty in science, engineering, and mathematics have enjoyed comparable opportunities within the university.” –NAS Report, 2010

"Overall, men and women are retained and promoted at the same rate.“ -Kaminski and Geisler, 2012

“At NJIT, there are no statistically significant differences between female and male retention. Men and women are promoted in rank at essentially the same rate as well.”

-NJIT ADVANCE 2012

THE NOT-SO-GOOD NEWS:The Arrow is Not Moving Toward Parity

The gender composition of the academic STEM workforce is still profoundly different from the human population it serves.

And likely to remain so.

IMPACT OF RETENTION FAILURESNational Data

Despite slightly improved hiring rates for women (up from 25% to 27%) retention failures for both men and women are so frequent…that "it may take 100 years before women are 50% of the faculty in STEM departments.”

-Kaminski and Geisler, 2012

NJIT DATA Tenure-Track STEM Faculty

2000: 22 women (9%) 

By 2010, 9 of those 22 women had left: 41% attrition rate

 7 of the 9 (78%) left for reasons other than retirement

 

2010: 24 women (11%)

10 Year Progress?n= +2

WHY IS ACHIEVING PARITY IMPORTANT?

Because trying to solve important problems using only half of the collective human brain is not smart!

A recent NSF-funded study shows that the collective intelligence of a group is positively correlated with the proportion of females in the group. -Wooley, 2010

That is, the problem-solving ability of a group diminishes as the number of women decreases.

RETENTION AND THE BOTTOM LINE

Academic hiring is expensive, especially in STEM where start-up packages are large.

Failed retention costs money… something that universities have very little of these days.

TRACKING STEM FACULTY CAREERS

A DECADE OF DATA

FROM THE NJIT ADVANCE PROJECT

BASIC RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Does supporting collaboration support women STEM faculty?

What is the relationship among collaboration productivity

retentionadvancement in rank

?

ULTIMATE RESEARCH PROJECT GOAL

To develop sustainable, scalable methods of collecting & analyzing bibliometric data

that can be used to createPREDICTIVE MODELS

of faculty career success(and failure)

METHODOLOGICAL TACTIC

Using COAUTHORSHIP DATA

as a proxy for Faculty Research Networks

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WHY COAUTHORSHIP?Coauthorship data is: Public Objective Can be scraped from the internet or captured from

faculty CVs Coauthorship requires a working relationship, unlike

citations or other publication measures Publications are time-stamped… so we can track the

evolution of the faculty network over time.

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Collecting Coauthorship Data

NJIT ADVANCE researchers text-mined the Scopus digital library to capture STEM faculty data• Built a web crawler to search Scopus

• Retrieved 8395 faculty publications produced from 2000-2010—including 3608 coauthored publications

• Also captured counts of publications of NJIT faculty with external faculty and grad students

• Compiled attributes from HR

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Collecting Coauthorship DataSignificant issues:

• NJIT faculty having same name as external faculty/grad students (“Common Name Problem”)

• Mislabeling of affiliations• Different databases having slightly

different publication titles (e.g. using the word “beta” as opposed to “β”)

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New Tool to Help Researchers Identify & Resolve Common Name & Duplication Problems

http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/linqs/ddupe/

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Collecting Coauthorship DataSustainability

Faculty at NJIT now required to enter yearly publications into Digital Measures software (“Activity Insight”)

• Entering this data is tied to merit-based awards for faculty

Tactic:• Use collected data to populate historical publications

• Retrieve new publications from Digital Measures

NJIT ADVANCE Database 514 tenured/ tenure-track faculty who worked at NJIT from 2000-2010--including a subset of 327 STEM faculty.

Attributes: departmentgender NJIT: 77 females, 437 males

NJIT STEM: 38 females, 289 malesrank progressiontenure statushire dateseparation date (if any)retention status (left/stayed)years at NJITyears in the studytotal number of publicationstotal number of coauthored publicationsnumber of publications coauthored with other NJIT faculty number of publications coauthored with Non-NJIT facultynumber of publications coauthored with NJIT grad students

Analytical Tools Used

For standard statistical tests:SAS ANOVA

To analyze network structure:

Organizational Risk Analyzer (ORA) software from Carnegie Mellon

UCINET, a social network analysis program distributed by Analytic Technologies

 

Analyzing the Relationship betweenPRODUCTIVITY and CAREER ADVANCEMENT

2000-2010

“Productivity” defined as number of publications and rate of publication

“Career Advancement” defined as retention and promotion in rank.

Hypothesis TestingH1. STEM faculty who publish more are

more successful in terms of rank increase.

POPULATION: All tenured/tenure track STEM faculty (n=327)

RESULT: Strongly Supported

POPULATION: A cohort of STEM faculty hired as assistant professors from 2000-2003

RESULT: Strongly Supported

Hypothesis TestingH1. STEM faculty who publish more are

more successful in terms of rank increase. Publication Rate & Advancement

POPULATION: A cohort of STEM faculty hired as assistant professors from 2000-2003

RESULT: Strongly Supported

Those who did not move up in rank: average (mean) publication rate of 5.73 publications per year (SD=3.36).

Those who were promoted from assistant to associate: average (mean) publication rate of 8.67 publications per year (SD=0.91)

Hypothesis TestingH1. STEM faculty who publish more are

more successful in terms of rank increase. Publication Rate & Retention

POPULATION: A cohort of STEM faculty hired as assistant professors from 2000-2003

RESULT: Strongly Supported

Those who left: average (mean) publication rate of 3.46 publications per year (SD=2.33).

Those who were retained: average (mean) publication rate of 8.78 publications per year (SD=0.94)

Analyzing the Relationship amongCOLLABORATION, PRODUCTIVITY and

CAREER ADVANCEMENT2000-2010

“Collaboration” defined as coauthorship

“Productivity” defined as number of publications and rate of publication

“Career Advancement” defined as retention and promotion in rank.

COLLABORATION, PRODUCTIVITY and CAREER ADVANCEMENT

National/ International Data

"When publishing productivity is measured by... a scientist's total number of publications,

collaboration is a strong predictor of publishing productivity.”

- Lee and Bozeman (2005)

COLLABORATION & PRODUCTIVITYNJIT ADVANCE Hypothesis Testing

H3. STEM faculty who coauthor more will publish more than faculty who coauthor less.

POPULATION: All tenured/tenure track STEM faculty (n=327)

RESULT: Strongly Supported

POPULATION: A cohort of STEM faculty hired as assistant professors from 2000-2003

RESULT: Strongly Supported

COLLABORATION & RETENTION/ PROMOTIONNJIT ADVANCE Hypothesis Testing

H4. STEM Faculty who co-author more are more successful in terms of rank increase.

POPULATION: A cohort of STEM faculty hired as assistant professors from 2000-2003

RESULT: Supported

Analyzing the Relationship amongNETWORK STRUCTURE,

PRODUCTIVITY and CAREER ADVANCEMENT2000-2010

NETWORK “CENTRALITY” MEASURES

Degree Centrality— The number of connections (“ties”) a person (“node”) has. High degree centrality indicates well-connected people who can directly reach many people in the network.

Degree

NETWORK “CENTRALITY” MEASURES

Betweenness Centrality— reflects the extent to which an individual has the ability to broker the flow of information in the network.

Betweenness

NETWORK “CENTRALITY” MEASURES

Eigenvector Centrality— reflects the extent to which an individual is connected to well-connected people in the network.

Eigenvector

Hypothesis Testing

H5. Faculty with higher Betweenness Centrality will publish more than faculty with lower Betweenness Centrality.

POPULATION: All tenured/tenure track STEM faculty (n=327)

RESULT: Strongly Supported

SUMMARY OF RESULTS:

For NJIT STEM Faculty (2000-2010)

Collaboration (co-authorship) Was positively correlated with

Productivity RetentionPromotion

SUMMARY OF RESULTS:

For NJIT STEM Faculty (2000-2010), the most important  predictors of productivity were:

1. co-authoring with non-NJIT researchers (“cosmopolitan collaboration”);

2. co-authoring with NJIT graduate students (the “worker bee connection”);

3. co-authoring with NJIT colleagues;4. Betweenness Centrality.  

Preferential Attachment & The Worker Bee ConnectionThe Case of Assistant Professor Y

Publication rate for successful assistant professors = 8.67 papers per year

Publication rate for Assistant Professor Y = 39 papers a year!

His secret?

Y was a post-doc—and now junior colleague--to one of NJIT’s most prolific and well-funded researchers, “Professor Z,” a man who from 2000-2010 produced over 150 publications, including more than 100 co-authored with one or more of his large stable of graduate students.

PRODUCTIVITY AND GENDER The Case of Professor Y helps to explain one seemingly anomalous result in our data analysis:

THE GENDER PUBLICATION GAP

NATIONAL DATA:"Women publish between 70% and 80% as many articles as men." - Lariviere, 2011

NJIT STEM FACULTY DATA (2000-2010):Female mean publication rate: 12.08 (SD=8.83)Male mean publication rate: 19.19 (SD=13.34)

i.e. The female pub rate was only 63% of the male rate.

NO GENDER DIFFERENCE IN P&T

NJIT 2000-2003: No statistically significant difference in retention and P&T rates for female & male STEM faculty

Assistant Professor Cohort Hired 2000-2003: No statistically significant difference in publication rates for successful assistant professors.

Gender Av # Years in Study

Av Pubs/Person Av Pubs/Year

Female 9 34.50 3.81Male 8.27 33.27 4.10

The most productive assistant professors, both male and female, tended to collaborate more--and to co-author more papers with graduate students.

SO, WHY THE OVERALL GENDER PUBLICATION GAP?

ONE ANSWER:HYPERPRODUCTIVITY AT THE TOP:

The Worker Bee Connection

NJIT T/TT STEM Faculty 2000-2010

20 men --5.7% of the total STEM faculty--produced 33% of all publications

A majority of these Top 20 Males are directors of one of NJIT's large funded research centers (like "Professor Z") orAssociated with a research center (like "Professor Y“)

HYPERPRODUCTIVITY AT THE TOP: The Worker Bee Connection

All Top 20 Males are full or distinguished professors.A majority already held that rank in 2000. All NJIT Research Center directors are male.

55% of the Top 20 Males‘ papers had NJIT grad students as co-authors.

 If we include both genders, only one woman appears in the Top 20 list of highest producers.

 WHAT WE CAN DOLeverage the mechanism of "preferential

attachment" ("the rich get richer")IN MENTORING:Connect new and marginalized faculty to graduate students (and undergrads looking for research experience)--and to senior colleagues who have large worker bee colonies

IN GRANT FUNDING:Fund clusters of women researchers, post-docs, and graduate students, building the network around existing "stars"--senior faculty who have high centrality values.

Leveraging the Benefits of

COLLABORATION

The Benefits of CollaborationIncreased productivity and advancement!

Division of labor; Partnership with colleagues who have complimentary

expertise; Access to expensive equipment; Access to graduate student RAs; Intellectual stimulation;

Collaboration among people with different intellectual tool kits drives knowledge creation and innovation;

Access to new and novel information; Access to tacit knowledge; Devil's advocacy;

Internal referring weeds out unfruitful approaches; Safe reality checking; Diminished social isolation; Increased social capital.

When it works well, strategic collaboration offers the very advantages that women

faculty need most in order to thrive:

the ability to do more high quality work in less time

and the ability to signal the value of their work

to the research community as a whole.

BUT…

1) Collaborations have costs as well as benefits;

2) Not all collaborators are equal.

In social networks, as in real estate, it is often “location, location, location” that creates value.

"TRANSACTION COSTS” OF COLLABORATION International collaboration involves:

time and money for traveltransaction costs resulting from differences in language and

cultural expectationsInternal collaboration across lines of ethnicity and gender involves:

cross-cultural communication issues;Reaping the "assembly effect" (1+1=5) requires:

a sophisticated understanding of small group process;expertise in effective project management;experience in conflict resolution;(and skill in psychiatric counseling?)

"Teamwork" can mean losing credit for your work;Pro-rating papers by number of authors;The "Matilda Effect" (Rossiter, 1993);

"Teamwork" can mean loss of the "alone time" needed for creativity. 

 

Most of all,collaboration involves the

"transaction cost” of locating and assessing

potential research partners.

 

New online data visualization tools from NJIT ADVANCE

reduce the transaction costs associated with professional collaboration.

The Research Interests Map provides an interactive display of NJIT faculty research interests and methodologies, allowing the user to identify high-value "targets.”

The Faculty Connections Visualizermaps actual collaborative interactions among faculty (co-authorship, co-PI ties), enabling the user to identify efficient “pathways” to the targets.

STEP 1 Identify “Destinations”

i.e. potential collaborators who have• Similar research interests• Complimentary research interests & methods• Equipment (instruments, software) they might share• Institutional knowledge and memory

Use the Research Interests Map Tool

(RIMap)

STEP 2 Identify “Pathways”

i.e. colleagues who can broker introductions to the “destination” faculty you want to reach

Use the Faculty Connections Visualizer Tool

You

FACULTY CAREER ADVANCEMENT NETWORK

NETWORK DATA VISUALIZATION—A GPS FOR CAREER MANAGEMENT

THE MENTOR AS BROKER & PATHFINDER

A Human GPS SYSTEM

CONNECTING COLLEAGUES

TO THE RESOURCES

THEY NEED TO SUCCEED.

Text MiningGoogle Scholar/Scopus

Faculty Network DB

SNA (ORA/UCINET)

Research Interests Tool

Interview Data

Updates

Digital Measures Interface

Career GPS Tool

FACULTY MENTORINGDEPARTMENTAL MANAGEMENT

The NJIT ADVANCE Strategy

Katia Passerini, Co-PI (SOM/IS)

Brooke Wu, Co-PI (IS)

NJIT ADVANCE PIs 2010-2012

Nancy Steffen-Fluhr, PI (HUM/ Murray Center)

ADVANCE Team 2010-2012

Research Assistants:

Regina Collins (IS doctoral student)

Mingzhu Zhu (IS doctoral student)

Consultants:

Roxanne Hiltz, IS, Emerita

Anatoliy Gruzd, CS/Information Management, Dalhousie

NJIT ADVANCE External Advisory BoardDr. Laura Kramer, Montclair University (Emerita)/ Former NSF ADVANCE Program Director Susan Metz, Co-Founder, WEPAN Dr. Caroline Haythornthwaite, Director and Professor, Archival & Information Studies, University of British Columbia Dr. Ellen Townes-Anderson, Professor, UMDNJ Department of Neurosciences, and director of the UMDNJ Faculty Mentoring Program 

 External Evaluator Dr. Katherine Mayberry, Vice President for Special Projects, Rochester Institute of Technology  

This work is sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation ADVANCE Program

(Awards 0547427 & HRD-1008549)

* Christakis, N. A., and J. Fowler. 2009. Connected: the surprising power of our social networks and how

they shape our lives. New York: Little, Brown and Co.

The NJIT ADVANCE Project

To download this presentation and our full paper, go to http://advance.njit.edu/