ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of the NSF funded OREGON STATE ADVANCE Seminar on STEM women faculty and senior administrators' understandings of, experiences with and responses to gender-based microaggressions in the academy. The 60-hour immersive ADVANCE Seminar is grounded in systems of oppression theories that call attention to the need for seeing everyday microaggressions as embedded within academic structures and practices (e.g., meetings, classrooms, laboratories, and field sites). Critical pedagogies, with embodied learning activities, gave participants opportunities to practice bias interruption strategies. Data from post-seminar interviews with women participants reveal ongoing experiences with microaggressions that left them feeling dismissed, objectified and/or professionally suspect as competent scientists. After completion of the seminar, participants shared a variety of responses to microaggressions from individual to structural strategies. Women felt more confident in their ability to interrupt oppressive situations and pointed to the value of the seminar in creating a supportive community. Women who held positional authority were also able to use their new knowledge and relationships to transform policies and practices in the STEM academic environment. While the seminar helped develop a pool of socially just leaders, sustaining the momentum of change will require institutionalizing key elements of the programme, including the ADVANCE Seminar.
