Modernizing Academic Appointment and Advancement (MA3) Challenge

The Modernizing Academic Appointment and Advancement (MA3) Challenge invites proposals from U.S.-based accredited, tax-exempt colleges and universities—including their departments, centers, and institutes—to reimagine their academic hiring, review, promotion, and tenure (RPT) processes. This initiative seeks bold, creative strategies to develop academic reward systems that foster a collaborative, responsive, and transparent research environment.

There is currently a significant disconnect between what institutions purport to value - access to knowledge, improving the pace of discovery, public trust in and community engagement with science, etc. - and the activities they tend to reward, like publishing scholarly works in high impact factor, big brand journals. If activities that advance these values - like open science, public engagement, civic science, team science, and diverse contributions to knowledge - are to propagate at scale, hiring and evaluation systems need to reward them properly.

The Challenge is organized by the Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA) in partnership with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Aspen Institute. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Dana Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have contributed $1.5 million dollars, collectively, to institutions seeking funding for efforts that lead to (1) explicit changes in hiring and RPT policies and practices, and (2) strengthened capacity to promote these changes within and across institutions.