Building moxie: advancing gender equity in academic commercialization through self-efficacy development
Adult and Higher Education, College of Education, Oregon State University
How they used Delve
A Doctor of Education candidate in Adult and Higher Education at Oregon State University used Delve to code eight semi-structured interviews (six women faculty and two program staff) from the pilot cohort of OSU's Moxie commercialization program, following Saldaña's descriptive and pattern coding cycles in a formative program evaluation of how the program shaped faculty self-efficacy.
“Primary data consisted of interview transcripts that were uploaded into Delve qualitative data analysis software for coding and organization. The primary analytic method followed Saldaña's (2021) guidance on coding cycles. The first cycle coding included descriptive coding aligned with each research question.”
- Field
- higher education; academic commercialization; gender equity; program evaluation
- Data
- 8 semi-structured interviews with the Moxie pilot cohort at Oregon State University (6 women faculty members and 2 commercialization program staff), triangulated with existing pre- and post-program survey data and institutional records reviewed descriptively for context
- Approach
- Formative program evaluation (Chen, 2015); Saldaña (2021) first-cycle descriptive coding and second-cycle pattern coding with a maintained codebook and constant comparative analysis; triangulated with existing program survey and institutional data
- Data types
- Interviews, Documents
Abstract
Women faculty at Oregon State University (OSU) are underrepresented in academic commercialization, making up 38% of tenure-track faculty but only 15% of commercialization activity. This gap is not a reflection of interest or ability. It reflects the compounding weight of barriers in the highly gendered intersection of STEM, entrepreneurship, and tenure-track academia. These spaces are shaped by masculine norms that can be difficult for women faculty to navigate. The goal of the study was to understand how participation in OSU’s Moxie program influenced faculty engagement and self-efficacy development related to academic commercialization, and to identify opportunities for program improvement. This study evaluated the pilot cohort of OSU’s Moxie program using a formative evaluation approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six faculty participants and two program staff members using a protocol informed by pre- and post-program surveys and institutional data. Interview data were analyzed using a qualitative coding process to identify patterns across participant experiences. Through Moxie, commercialization shifted from something abstract and distant to something navigable and connected to skills faculty already possessed. The all-women cohort was central to this shift. These findings suggest that engagement in academic commercialization is shaped not only by access to institutional resources, but by how faculty understand commercialization in relation to their academic work.
Citation
Melissa Ward (2026). Building moxie: advancing gender equity in academic commercialization through self-efficacy development. Oregon State University ScholarsArchive.