Grover Named ADVANCE Professor at Tech

Martha Grover was recently named the ADVANCE professor for Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering – a role focused on supporting the advancement of women and underrepresented minorities in academia.

Established with a 2001 NSF Institutional Transformation Grant, ADVANCE professors are nominated by their respective deans to serve as their college’s leading advocate for gender and race equality. There is an ADVANCE professor in each of Georgia Tech’s six colleges.

Professor Grover, who is the associate chair of graduate studies for ChBE, says: “I began my faculty career at Georgia Tech in 2002, as the ADVANCE program was getting started. I was fresh out of my PhD, and excited to have the opportunity to start my career as an assistant professor.”

She adds, “Though not unaware of gender bias and dynamics, I had until that point tried to keep my blinders on and focus on my academic performance, building my research portfolio and credentials.”

Out of f40 professors in ChBE at the time, there was only one other woman on the faculty (the total is now 11).

“While I appreciated the support of my male colleagues, I enjoyed the networking and social opportunities with the women at the ADVANCE events, and I participated actively,” Grover says.

Through ADVANCE programming, she learned about scientific, quantitative data on unconscious bias. “Learning about this data was affirming and uplifting for me,” Grover says.

As an ADVANCE professor, Grover aims to pay particular attention to the needs of Black women on campus (not only faculty, but also staff and students).

Martha Grover quotes Martin Luther King Jr. in explaining her guiding principle with the ADVANCE program: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”