UROP Research Mentor Project Submission Portal: Submission #789

Submission information
Submission Number: 789
Submission ID: 14571
Submission UUID: d637e5e5-9907-4bc7-8327-afd4104f3003

Created: Thu, 08/15/2024 - 09:31 AM
Completed: Thu, 08/15/2024 - 09:48 AM
Changed: Thu, 10/24/2024 - 11:02 AM

Remote IP address: 144.174.214.38
Submitted by: Anonymous
Language: English

Is draft: No

Research Mentor Information

Taylor Higgins
She/her
Dr. or Prof.
th22u@fsu.edu
Faculty
FAMU-FSU College of Engineering
Florida State University
Headshot.jpg

Additional Research Mentor(s)

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Overall Project Details

Parental Leave Policies in STEM
Parental Leave, STEM, Policies, Diversity, Engineering, Women in STEM, Robotics
No
2
Open to all majors (slight preference for those in STEM fields, but really it doesn't matter to me!)
AME Building (2003 Levy Ave. Tallahasse, FL)
Yes
Partially Remote
5-10 (negotiable)
Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
As a female in academia who recently had a baby, I am curious about what current maternity leave policies are for universities around the United States and understanding how the FAMU-FSU policy compares. Eventually I would like to make strategic efforts to ensure that FAMU-FSU is a welcoming place for young female scientists to work. To prepare for this effort, I need to know what our policies are, what other university policies are, how our current policies are received by young female academics, and how our current policies could affect our ability to recruit and retain strong female faculty candidates in STEM. As a researcher on this project, you will help me to collect data along these lines, create/distribute surveys for women in STEM to voice their opinions, analyze results, and write a report and/or presentation for us to share our findings with members of the community/administration/etc. This is a project that I am personally very passionate about and that I hope will be a very rewarding project with tangible benefits for women and families in academia.
Data collection via online research and surveys, data analysis, writing report on our results
Good communication skills - I need someone who is particularly good at sharing our findings with the larger community in order to make a difference in future policy decisions.
Good sleuthing skills - I need someone who is good at finding information online (figuring out the current parental leave policies at other universities), and who can find literature showing the effects of various leave policies on faculty recruitment and diversity.
As a mentor, I work best with students who are inquisitive, pro-active, and problem solvers. I do not like to micro-manage. I see my job as being a resource to my research students, helping to solve problems when stuck, providing overall vision, and occasionally giving nudges in the right direction. I see my students as the expert in their given project, and I expect students to go learn skills, find possible solutions, try many things that may or may not work, and ultimately to come to research meetings ready to teach me all the cool things they’ve learned, tried, and developed. I aim to creating a safe environment in which mentees feel that it is acceptable to fail and learn from their mistakes. I do expect mentees to take ownership of their work and have accountability for their effort in the project. Overall, I want to do fun engineering work that makes a difference in human lives, and I want my students to feel empowered to do difficult things and solve challenging problems.
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UROP Program Elements

Yes
Yes
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Yes
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2024
https://cre.fsu.edu/urop-research-mentor-project-submission-portal?element_parents=elements/research_mentor_information/headshot_optional_&ajax_form=1&_wrapper_format=drupal_ajax&token=XS_r0ad0X-154DU1e5PJU-Y0d7Rx8reErPwqV4kCJZs