Evaluation of the Pay It FORWARD Program

The Pay It FORWARD project was evaluated to assess the process of training a new cadre of leaders developing career advancement workshops for women and underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Based on successful FORWARD to Professorship workshops held since 2003 and adapted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2005, Pay It FORWARD sought to train 10 new teams to adopt or adapt a model workshop for specific ethnic groups, disciplines, or regions. Training of the teams took place at the national model workshop in two cohorts (2010 and 2011), producing 10 new unique examples of career advancement workshops. This chapter describes and evaluates the training process, as well as the outcomes of the entire project. A workshop questionnaire provides participants’ overall positive views of the workshop experience, of the usefulness of the workshop components, and a report of the current climate for women in STEM academia.