Exploratory Assessment of Advocates & Allies Workshops at a Midwestern STEM-Focused Institution

Advocates and Allies (A&A) programs, designed to educate individuals from demographic majority groups to become more centrally involved in equality endeavors, have been introduced to more than twenty U.S higher education institutions with the support of NSF ADVANCE grant funding. Most evaluations of the impact of these programs have been through indirect measures, such as self-reports of satisfaction with the training. We analyzed data across five years and several iterations of A&A workshops at a research-active, public Midwestern, predominantly White, STEM-dominant university to determine changes in participants’ perceptions of equity at the institution. Results suggest that participants left the workshops with more perceptions of local inequity at the institution than they reported before the workshop. Effects were found for both perceptions of racial equity and perceptions of gender equity but were stronger and more consistent for the latter. The effects of the workshops varied across time. Implications of the results for scholarship and practice for the improvement of advocacy programs are discussed.