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Happy National Mentoring Month!


Posted: Jan 31 2023 by

Patricia Marsteller
Emory University
Patricia Marsteller, Emory University

Change Topics (Working Groups): Change Leaders, Equity and Inclusion
Target Audience: College/University Staff, Non-tenure Track Faculty, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration, Graduate Students, Post-doctoral Fellows
Program Components: Professional Development:Advising and Mentoring, Diversity/Inclusion, Supporting Students:Mentoring Program

Since Odysseus left Mentor in charge of his family, estates, and his son, the art and science of mentoring has been critical to guiding career and educational development. Like Mentor, I aim to be a wise and trusted counselor, guide, guardian, and teacher or as the title of a widely read book indicates, an Adviser, Teacher, Role Model, Friend (National Academies of Sciences, 1997). I have learned that mentoring is an alliance between people and that both mentors and mentees benefit from agreements about how the relationship will evolve and how to include social support, career development, and growth. With faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates, mentoring often involves getting to know the whole person, their aims and aspirations, and their qualms about the future. Connecting students to the right resources or empowering them to bring up difficult questions with their faculty or research mentors requires that you be open, listen carefully, and know them as persons. More

Open Education as a lever for social justice and equity - Exploring the many on ramps of Open STEM education


Posted: Dec 21 2022 by

Melanie Lenahan
Raritan Valley Community College
Carlos Goller
North Carolina State University
Kaitlin Bonner
Saint John Fisher College
Kaitlin Bonner - St. John Fisher University,

Carlos Goller - North Carolina State University 

Melanie Lenahan - Raritan Valley Community College

*All authors contributed equally to this article. The names are arranged in alphabetical order.

Change Topics (Working Groups): Change Leaders, Equity and Inclusion
Target Audience: College/University Staff, Non-tenure Track Faculty, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration
Program Components: Professional Development:Accessibility, Diversity/Inclusion

The Open Education Ecosystem can be thought of as a roundabout where educators and researchers enter into a high-impact landscape through many different on ramps, including Open Educational Resources (OER), Open Data, Open Science, Open Pedagogy, or any of the many aspects of Open Education Ecosystem. Here we describe these common on ramps, transitions, and intersections between different facets of the Open Education landscape and more importantly how Open Education can be leveraged to promote social justice and equity in STEM education. More

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Flying with Sankofa: Moving forward by learning from the past


Posted: Aug 23 2022 by

Ruthmae Sears
University of South Florida
Laura Frost
Florida Gulf Coast University
Alec Cattell
Texas Tech University
Alec Cattell, Texas Tech University; Laura Frost, Florida Gulf Coast University; and Ruthmae Sears, University of South Florida

*All authors contributed equally to the document.

Change Topics (Working Groups): Equity and Inclusion
Target Audience: College/University Staff, Non-tenure Track Faculty, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration, Teaching/Learning Assistants, Graduate Students, Post-doctoral Fellows
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion, Cultural Competency

It is important to celebrate the heroes in our society who spoke up, and who took action to change systems and improve the lives of many. For instance, our nation celebrates heroes like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose legacy continues to inspire civil rights initiatives and advocacy for equitable opportunities. The living legend Shirley Malcom, director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) SEA Change program, was recently celebrated when her name was recognized on a building at her alma mater, Penn State University. Over her career, Dr. Malcom has tirelessly advocated and brought attention to the challenges of intersectionality, specifically the challenges faced by women of color in the sciences. More

Learning from Evaluation of Effective Teaching Event: Change Leaders Perspectives


Posted: Sep 27 2021 by

Rachel Renbarger
Western Michigan University
Madhura Kulkarni
Northern Kentucky University
Madhura Kulkarni, Northern Kentucky University and Rachel Renbarger, Western Michigan University

Change Topics (Working Groups): Change Leaders, Equity and Inclusion
Target Audience: College/University Staff, Non-tenure Track Faculty, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion, Institutional Systems:Evaluating Teaching

At the end of August, three ASCN working groups came together to put on an event called, "Evaluation of effective and inclusive teaching: How can teaching and learning center professionals be involved in change for social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion?" (We will refer to social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as JEDI for ease throughout this post.) We recommend that people interested in the event watch the recording and access the resources on the event page, but the purpose of this blog post is to highlight what we learned from this event so that other change agents can implement the findings into their work immediately.

Big questions that we wanted to focus on included the who, what, and how of transforming teaching. To understand how change happens, and how we might help create teaching evaluation change on our campuses, we asked Dr. Susan Elrod to describe her work modeling institutional change. More

Building Structural Equity: What do our organizations need?


Posted: Aug 31 2021 by

Rachel Renbarger
Western Michigan University
Nita Kedharnath
Henry Ford Community College
Nita Kedharnath, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (SEISMIC) and Rachel Renbarger, Western Michigan University (ASCN)

Change Topics (Working Groups): Equity and Inclusion
Target Audience: College/University Staff, Non-tenure Track Faculty, Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty, Institution Administration
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion

ASCN and SEISMIC began collaborating in spring 2021 to understand how both organizations could synergistically support STEM education transformation. These collaborative meetings included the project coordinators of both organizations and the authors of this piece, Nita Kedharnath (project manager of SEISMIC) and Rachel Renbarger (research director of ASCN). We started meeting monthly to discuss equity challenges within our organizations, to problem-solve together, and to share resources to ensure equity progress continues for both our groups even while we target different priorities.

In March, the murder of Asian American women working at spas in Atlanta amplified calls for anti-racist actions from institutions in the United States, including institutions of higher education. During one of our collaborative meetings, we asked each other what steps our respective organizations have taken toward racial justice. While both ASCN and SEISMIC had been working on diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice in STEM education since the organizations' inceptions, this work was outward-facing and dedicated to helping university faculty members change their institutional settings. What were our organizations' roles in tackling racial justice? What should we be doing as leaders? This lack of a clear path forward led us to ask these questions to experts who have been doing this reflective work within STEM higher education. More

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