The 1972 amendment to the U.S. Education Act prohibits sex discrimination at all schools and higher educational institutions that receive federal funding. Title IX created new opportunities for girls and women and protected their right to a safe educational environment free of sexual harassment and discrimination.

Early interpretation of Title IX most visibly transformed athletic programming. Later interpretation expanded sexual harassment to include sexual assault, sexual violence, and stalking. The recommendations were later rescinded, reinstated, and overhauled, in terms of support for a victim-centered approach versus a more stringent due process for the accused individual.

The spirit of Title IX is inclusion, and new recommendations extend civil rights protections to transgender and gender non-conforming students.

Fifty years ago, Title IX set the stage for change. But the reason why RIT now has more women faculty, administrators, coaches, and exemplary students like Zeglen is that women acted.

Prior generations of women invested their careers to make RIT a better version of itself, including winning two transformative grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) focused on gender equity.

The grant work not only changed RIT, but the work is having an influence on higher education, said Elizabeth Litzler, director of the Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity at the University of Washington.

“RIT is a national leader in academic gender equity initiatives,” she said. “RIT is literally leading others through learning how to transform compensation processes.”

Early years: Laying the foundation

By the time Title IX cracked open the door for women in 1972, Carol Richardson had already walked through it.

Richardson was one of a few women engineers at a General Electric laboratory, where she worked for 10 years. In 1978, she joined RIT’s College of Applied Science and Technology (CAST) as the first woman faculty member in the electrical engineering technology department. She was one of only two women in her college.

But Richardson rose through the ranks. In 1993, she designed the BS degree in telecommunications engineering technology, followed by a master’s degree. She was chair of the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Telecommunications Engineering Technology and from 2006 to 2008 served as interim dean of CAST.

“RIT wanted to increase women in engineering, computer science, and science, but we needed role models,” Richardson said. “We didn’t have many female faculty members in those areas at that time.”

Richardson welcomed Maureen Valentine, who came to RIT in 1993.

She also had 10 years of industry experience and was used to being the only woman on a construction site or in a design meeting. Valentine joined RIT’s Department of Civil Engineering Technology and was the second female faculty member in CAST. She looked to Richardson as a mentor.

“Carol broke the mold early on,” Valentine said. “She was one of the few female engineers in the workforce and then in a university engineering technology program. Diversification in our faculty ranks came later.”

Valentine followed Richardson as department chair and became associate dean in CAST in 2006 under Richardson. Together, they started Women in Technology to support students in their college,
and Valentine became the first program director.

“The pipeline into engineering was changing,” Valentine said. “There was a strong push to begin that process. And to get more women in engineering. You had all the right people in the right places at RIT to be receptive to the idea.”

That set the stage for bigger changes in the years ahead.

The 2000s: Building the framework

Margaret Bailey was one of those changes. When she joined the Kate Gleason College of Engineering (KGCOE) in 2003, the college was struggling to attract women under­graduates. She was surprised the number was only 8 percent, significantly below the national average, especially for a college named after a woman.

Harvey Palmer, then-dean of engineering, hired Bailey to teach thermodynamics and to improve the demographics. Bailey was the first person to hold the Kate Gleason Endowed Chair to look at gender-related issues in the college.

“The culture and leadership were poised to do something about the low representation of women students,” Bailey said. “The faculty and administrators were eager for change.”

The engineering profession was pushing for a diversified workforce to keep the nation competitive in technology research and development. Title IX helped remove obstacles for women to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Bailey’s work helped introduce young women to engineering as a career and gave them role models.

Bailey facilitated partnerships with faculty and administrators across campus and created outreach, recruitment, and retention programs, which evolved into the award-winning Women in Engineering at RIT, or WE@RIT.

She supported targeted recruitment and new degree programs in biomedical engineering and chemical engineering to draw women undergraduates—such as Zeglen.

Yearly enrollment numbers of women began to fluctuate between the high teens and 20 percent, and in the 2019-2020 academic year, women made up more than 25 percent of undergraduates in KGCOE.

But still a deeper culture change was needed to give women students faculty role models. Bailey won federal funding to put RIT on this path.

Bailey was the lead on two pivotal grants from the NSF focused on gender equity in academic careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—the NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Catalyst in 2007 and the full NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation in 2012.

“These awards were big wins for RIT,” Bailey said. “They have never been won twice in a row other than by RIT.”

Bailey assembled a team that conducted the first climate survey specifically for faculty.

Recommended changes within the institutional structure resulted in new policies that began to address disparities in hiring and promoting women faculty.

One policy that improved the climate for pre-tenure faculty protected their right to maternity leave by stopping the “tenure clock” during this time. Women could care for their newborn without an underlying expectation of continued research and writing.

“We looked at differences by gender and how long it was taking women to go up for promotion,” Bailey said. “We asked RIT to look at salary. It was huge that the administration was willing to do this with us.”

Litzler, from the University of Washington, said this compensation work is now having a broad impact across multiple universities.

Carol Marchetti, a statistician in the School of Mathematical Sciences who analyzed the results of the climate survey, said the work also was career changing for members of the team.

“Margaret used the word ‘sponsorship,’ as opposed to ‘mentorship,’” Marchetti said. “And she was a real, true sponsor. Margaret Bailey is a big reason why I finally made it to full professor.”

In 2018, the university institutionalized the gender equity work and established the AdvanceRIT office. Bailey led the creation of this unit within the Office of the Provost and served as director until 2020.

Today: Making academic progress

NSF ADVANCE sponsorship continues to shape RIT, now with a 2021 ADVANCE Partnership grant that shares the team’s 15 years of salary equity work with other universities, such as Drexel, Gallaudet, and Villanova. Marchetti is leading the project.

 “We’re trying to make institutional compensation systems more transparent and to learn through our work with other universities how we can do a better job, especially with women of color and Deaf and hard-of-hearing women,” Marchetti said.

Marchetti’s colleague, Betsy Dell, has seen the grassroots effort for gender equity become part of the fabric of RIT.

Now, Dell has succeeded Bailey as director of AdvanceRIT. In this role, Dell and her team, in 2021, won the National Institutes of Health Prize for Enhancing Faculty Gender Diversity in Biomedical and Behavioral Science.

Dell is also the senior faculty associate to the provost for women faculty. She created and leads the Council for Representation and Engagement of Women Faculty, which advises AdvanceRIT.

And she is preparing to launch a woman’s leadership certificate to increase the number of women department chairs and participants in Faculty Senate.

“We are working to make RIT a place where women faculty feel welcomed, connected, and valued,” Dell said.

That work was one attraction for Ellen Granberg, who became the first woman provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at RIT in 2018.

“It’s a real signal a university takes to heart gender equity and greater equality,” Granberg said, adding that was something she was looking for.

Granberg has acted on recommendations from the Advance team, funding dual-career hires for candidates with a partner at another institution. The program helps recruit women faculty by funding a three-year position for their partner at RIT.

Granberg is also focusing on gender equity in career progression, looking at the tenure process for all faculty. She has asked her deans to consider greater equality in teaching assignments, especially for graduate classes.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in representation of women faculty,” she said. “It created momentum for diversity at RIT.”