Martha Mecartney Named ADVANCE Equity Advisor for Samueli School

ChEMS professor appointed Faculty Assistant to the Dean

Martha Mecartney, Ph.D., a chemical engineering and materials science professor, has been appointed the Faculty Assistant to the Dean/ADVANCE Equity Advisor and director of The Henry Samueli School of Engineering’s Program for Diversity in Engineering Education.

An Equity Advisor participates in faculty recruiting by approving search strategies and raising awareness of current best practices. Additionally, the advisor organizes faculty development programs, with both formal and informal mentoring, as well as addresses individual issues raised by women and underrepresented minority faculty.



Mecartney, who joined UC Irvine in 1990, conducts research in sol-gel processing of oxide ceramics, including thin films, grain boundaries in ceramics, interfacial engineering of superplastic ceramics, and analytical transmission electron microscopy.



The UCI ADVANCE Program carries out the campus commitment to gender equity and diversity in the professoriate. Originally funded by a National Science Foundation Institutional Transformation Award in 2001, UC Irvine has seen dramatic gains in the presence of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Based on the success of the Equity Advisor model, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Michael R. Gottfredson, Ph.D., institutionalized UCI ADVANCE and extended its mission to include diversity in July 2006. This commitment ensures that equity and diversity will remain essential priorities in advancing excellence in the multiple missions of UC Irvine. In the future as in the past, a culture of inclusion is fundamental to American higher education and its continued global leadership in expanding the frontiers of knowledge.