CSSI Research Seminar: Mark Pachucki, Laurel Smith-Doerr, Ethel Mickey

Centering Equity After Acute Crisis: Analyzing Disparities in COVID-19 Productivity Impacts by Faculty Rank, Gender, Race, and Caregiving Status

*Co-sponsored with ADVANCE

Gender and racial diversity in knowledge production leads to greater creativity and innovation, but only when workplaces are equitable and integrated, allowing members to do their best work on a level playing field.

This seminar seeks to report back to faculty initial findings from a computational text analysis of UMass data on pandemic impacts gathered from de-identified AY2019-20 annual faculty report information. An important study motivation is to reveal which types of faculty were initially most impacted, and to continue accounting for longer-term effects of pandemic disruptions to productivity and faculty equity. The goal is to identify mechanisms producing gendered and racialized outcomes in holistic productivity (service, teaching, scholarship) during and after a crisis. If mechanisms are not characterized, the pandemic era may mark a sharp decline in US faculty diversity and a corresponding drop in transformative innovation. There will be ample discussion time, with a focus on how findings might inform careful, equity-informed policy measures on our campus and beyond.