“[The] UC received [National Science Foundation] grants to support our efforts to attract top quality women and under-represented minority faculty to STEM disciplines,” Director of Media Relations for the UC Office of the President Steve Montiel said in an email.

The UC system has appointed four principal investigators to earn grants that will be used increase diversity within the STEM discipline. Susan Carlson — the vice provost for academic personnel at the University of California — is one of the principal investigators working to earn grants for the 10 UC campuses.

“Because of our location and the strength of our academic programs, we should have the most diverse STEM faculty among the nation’s research universities,” Carlson said in a Jan. 14 UC Newsroom article titled “New grant projects aim to improve hiring of women, minorities in STEM fields.”

Carlson initially sought out the grant to analyze hiring data provided by the UC system in order to determine the next step toward increasing gender and cultural diversity within STEM fields on UC campuses.

Carlson discovered that the UC system has fewer women in STEM fields than most nationwide statistics.

The grants will also go toward funding round table-style discussions in order to discuss recruiting techniques with faculty and staff from the 10 various UC campuses.

“We know that we serve diverse students, and research shows that these students are more successful when they have faculty members who share similar backgrounds and experiences,” Carlson said.

Several workshops have already been planned including women of color in STEM fields at UC Irvine, faculty review processes at UCSD and Latina issues at UC Davis. Dates have yet to be determined.