Project: COVID Gendered Academic Productivity (COVID GAP)
Journal Article: July 29, 2022
“Set Your Soul on Fire”: A Feminist-Informed Co-Constructed Autoethnography of Sixteen Multidiscipline, Multicultural, and Multilingual Globally-Located Academic Women Exploring Gendered Academic Productivity During COVID-19
doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/12291
This co-constructed autoethnographic reflection presents the experiences of our feminist-informed research team, COVID GAP (Gendered Academic Productivity), a group of sixteen women who collaborated to investigate reports of reduced academic contributions from women-identified scholars during the pandemic. As insider researchers, we joined together in a virtual space with the shared goal to better understand women academics’ lived experiences of the impact of the pandemic specifically as related to their academic productivity. Throughout our work together as a research team, we have reflected on how the pandemic has impacted each of us as academic women and how participation in the COVID GAP research group provided us with the opportunity to engage in interdisciplinary scholarship and collaboration. We shared our process of co-creating our research team, our intersectionality as academics, and our gendered experiences of how scholarly productivity serves as currency throughout academia. Utilizing quotes from all members, we unified our voices in feminist accord concluding with recommendations for fellow academic women.
Journal Article: January 17, 2022
“Part of Something Larger than Myself”: Lessons Learned From a Multidisciplinary, Multicultural, and Multilingual International Research Team of Academic Women
doi.org/10.1177/16094069211073209
Bringing our collective experiences of past collaborations through a virtual connection, we created an international research team of 16 multidiscipline, multicultural, and multilingual academic women called “COVID GAP” (Gendered Academic Productivity) to explore the ongoing challenges and effects of COVID-19. Identifying as insider researchers, we engaged in a two-phase, primarily qualitative research project to better understand the lived experiences of academics during the pandemic. Our past individual experiences with cooperative research informed our roles and responsibilities and how we organized and communicated. This article is a reflection of how COVID GAP has refined our collaborative process in response to an evolving comprehension of our own lessons learned including understanding the nature of cooperative research and that it takes time and effort. From our experience, we provide specific recommendations for group collaborations emphasizing the need to identify a team coordinator to organize efforts, the establishment of a safe and equitable working environment for all involved, and the explicit attention to building a network for research partnerships.
Preprint: July 2021
Research Productivity Among Women in Global Academia During the Early Stages of the Pandemic: A Qualitative Analysis
The discourse on research productivity during the early months of the COVID-19 crisis has been dominated by quantitative examinations of manuscripts published since the outbreak of the pandemic. Existing findings highlight that women scholars were publishing less and less than men, but few considered the reasons behind this phenomenon. This paper offers new empirical insights into the experiences and perceptions of women scholars during the early stages of the pandemic, helping us understand why they have been seemingly less productive during this time.We coded qualitative questionnaire responses from 101 women scholars from across the world, using an inductive thematic network approach, adopting a feminist lens to examine women’s experiences (and social roles in and outside of academia). Our findings illustrate the centrality of support with respect to childcare, professional-emotional support from peers and mentors lost due to stay-at-home orders. Restricted access to institutional facilities, resources, subsequent loss of structure, additional time required to prepare for online teaching, and increased service load have negatively impacted research productivity. For many women, these factors are compounded by poor mental health with high cognitive and emotional tolls, resulting in depleted resources for the highly intellectually demanding research and writing activities. Conversely, some women scholars, particularly those without care responsibilities, reported reduced commutes, fewer meetings, and flexible working hours, resulting in unchanged or increased research productivity. As the impact of the pandemic is ongoing, it is critical to assess the underlying causes of reduced productivity of women scholars to mitigate these effects.
Project: Evaluating Undergraduate Research and Extension Experience
Journal article: November 10, 2021
“A taste of graduate school without really fully committing to it": The undergraduate experiential learning project at Oregon State University
Undergraduate research experience has been proven to improve student learning and retention. Since 2018, Oregon State University Department of Wood Science and Engineering has offered Research and Extension Experiences for Undergraduates (REEU) through support from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Education and Workforce Development program. Between 2018 and 2020, 31 undergraduate students conducted research and/or gained experience in Extension projects during a 12-wk summer internship. The goal of this work is to assess the success of mentor–mentee relationships and how the program benefits the mentees’ career. Data for this research consists of transcribed interviews of seven mentor–mentee pairs. Transcripts are qualitatively analyzed to capture insights regarding participants’ experiences in the program. Students who participated in the REEU program improved their research skills and soft skills such as adaptation, writing, and communication. As a result of their participation, students are more likely to attend graduate school.
Project: Green Jobs
Technical report: October 29, 2021
Trends in forest-related employment and tertiary education: Insights from selected key countries around the globe
This report is part of the “Global student networking and green jobs in the forest sector”, a capacity development project coordinated by the European Forest Institute (EFI) in collaboration with the International Forestry Students’ Association (IFSA) and the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO). The project explores ways to prepare future foresters for the expected changes and provides analytical insights at the interface of trends in forest-related employment and forest-related tertiary education, and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL). Additional funding for this report was provided by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN).
