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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Oregon State University has been awarded a $3.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to improve conditions for women in the academic science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, disciplines.

The five-year ADVANCE grant will be used to help recruit, retain and promote more women in STEM and the social and behavioral sciences at OSU; provide support for women in STEM and implement policies and programs that aid in these efforts.

"The goal of the grant is to transform the institutional climate for women in the STEM fields," said Susan Shaw, the grant's principal investigator. "What we want is an institution where difference is welcome and the value of different perspectives and experiences is understood."

OSU is the first institution in the state to receive an institutional transformation grant from the National Science Foundation's ADVANCE program. ADVANCE began in 2001 with the goal of increasing the representation and advancement of women in STEM and developing a more diverse science and engineering workforce. Past grant recipients include the University of Washington, Michigan State University and Cornell University.

"Through ADVANCE, the National Science Foundation invests in the future of women in STEM," said program director Beth Mitchneck. "Supporting institutional change that furthers the advancement of women faculty is a means to making the institution more receptive to talent from all backgrounds."

Women have historically been underrepresented in the STEM fields ­in academia. In 2012, 23 percent of Oregon State's STEM faculty, including faculty in the social and behavioral sciences, were women. Women accounted for 20.8 percent of the full professorships in those disciplines.

OSU leaders have taken significant steps to enhance diversity on campus in recent years, and the ADVANCE grant is designed to further the university's goals, Shaw said.

"A lot of the previous ADVANCE grants have tended to look at women as one group," said Shaw, who is director of the School of Language, Culture and Society and a professor of women, gender and sexuality studies in the College of Liberal Arts.

"We're looking at women across differences - race, sexual identity, social, class," she said. "Those intersections are critically important to understanding women's professional experiences and challenges."

A new version of the university's Difference, Power and Discrimination faculty development program will be crafted to focus on STEM issues. The program includes a summer seminar for STEM faculty and administrators on theories about systems of oppression and the impacts gender, race and class may have on how people participate in an institution, Shaw said.

The first steps to implementing the grant are hiring a program manager and establishing a website for the project. The first faculty seminars are expected next summer, she said.

Shaw and several co-investigators, including faculty in the sciences and social sciences, also will research how OSU's ADVANCE program is working. They will present findings at conferences, share best practices with other institutions and develop an online journal about program activities, Shaw said.

The co-investigators are Rebecca Warner, senior vice provost for academic affairs; Michelle Bothwell, associate professor of bioengineering in the College of Engineering; Sarina Saturn, assistant professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts; and Tuba Ozkan-Haller, professor of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences and professor of civil and construction engineering.