Kate Brody Nooner, senior associate dean of the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s College of Science and Engineering and psychology professor, is a force in higher education – a force she uses to help people. 

“It is exciting to be a leader in higher education,” Nooner said. “I get to do more good, to help more people reach their dreams.” 

Most recently, Nooner led the effort to obtain a nearly $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the UNC-by-the-S.E.A. (STEM Equity Access) project. The project is intended to promote the success and advancement of UNCW’s women faculty in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), particularly those who are affiliated with the military or are the first generation in their families to have attended college.

“The goal is to ensure women faculty in STEM can rise to full professorship, apply for grants at the same level, and seek leadership opportunities at the same level as men,” Nooner said.

To reach that objective, Nooner, who is also the study’s lead principal investigator, and her team are conducting an in-depth, comprehensive analysis of the university’s policies and practices regarding the advancement of its female STEM faculty.

During the research and discovery process, Nooner’s team will identify areas in which the university excels and areas that could be improved. This will be achieved by studying best practices from other universities and collecting data from surveys, focus groups and individual interviews. 

Getting the individual views of female STEM faculty is essential if the team is to learn what themes occur at the UNCW that enable them to advance as well as barriers they encounter, according to Nooner.

“We often get information from talking to people in groups and interviews that you can’t get from bubbles in a survey,” Nooner said.

Her team is also meeting regularly with an advisory board composed of university leaders, other campus constituents, UNCW’s Director of Military Affairs and the Gender Studies and Research Center to discuss issues and findings.

The study will culminate with a five-year, data-driven action plan to support and enable UNCW’s women faculty in STEM to advance professionally.

However, Nooner expects the study’s impact to go much further. The first and most obvious beneficiaries are other UNCW women faculty.

She adds that UNCW’s students will benefit as well.

“The goal is to make UNCW the best place possible for faculty, which in turn will make it the best place for students,” Nooner said. “We can model for kids what success looks like. Having women faculty in STEM succeed at the highest levels will help students see themselves at those levels.”

Her current work at UNCW is only part of a long progression of positions she has held in higher education, including chair of the UNCW Department of Psychology, past vice president of UNCW’s faculty senate, member of UNCW’s Million Dollar Club for her substantial external grant activity and faculty member of Duke University’s School of Medicine.

“I want to help as many people as possible reach their definition of success,” Nooner said. “It’s a wonderful reason to want to go to work.”

This article originally appeared in WILMA magazine’s weekly WILMA Leadership email newsletter. To sign up for that and the WILMA Lifestyle email, go to wilmamag.com/email-newsletter.