Building on the BOSE Report of Indicators for STEM Education

Posted: Mar 23 2018 by

David Bressoud
Macalester College

David Bressoud, Macalester College

As everyone probably knows by now, the National Academies have released their Indicators for Monitoring Undergraduate STEM Education.

There clearly is much overlap with the charge to the Working Group on Demonstrating Change. We would appreciate informal discussion around two questions:

1. Is there anything left for us to do?
2. Assuming the answer to #1 is "yes," how can we shape our work so as to build on this report? More

Turning on the Thrive Channel to Accelerate Change in Higher Education

Posted: Mar 7 2018 by

Lorne Whitehead
University of British Columbia

Susan Elrod
Indiana University-South Bend

Susan Elrod and Lorne Whitehead Conversations about "institutional change" in higher education have become pervasive. This is probably because colleges and universities are under tremendous pressure - to graduate more students, to improve success of underrepresented minority students, to reduce costs, and to expand the benefits they provide to our society. Many state systems are engaged in developing performance-based funding metrics that are intended to promote achievement of specified goals. Others are engaged in major reorganizations that are merging or possibly eliminating campuses in service of larger goals that are important to the state, such as enhanced transfer, graduation or fiscal efficiency. This seems scary, but at the heart of all of this is a sound idea - since our society has a long history of improvement and undoubtedly there are still more improvements to make. And to do that, organizations must be adaptable; they must make changes for the better. Why then, is this so concerning for so many?

A key challenge is that achieving change in any organization is hard. It is complicated. It involves many levels of the organization. It is motivated by a variety of purposes. It is challenged by competing agendas. It is frequently stalled by a variety of obstacles.

Further, positive change requires a vision, strategy, and tactics. But most importantly, it requires effective change leadership. What does that actually entail? More

How Does Your Professional Organization Lead Positive Change?

Posted: Jan 5 2018 by

Pamela Brown
CUNY New York City College of Technology

Pamela Brown, CUNY New York City College of Technology

We are creating resources for the ASCN Working Group 4: Demonstrating Impact and others, interested in higher education systemic change efforts, by soliciting responses to important questions.

This month's question is related to professional organizations. We are interested to learn about activities different professional organizations in STEM disciplines are using to accelerate change.

Professional organizations/societies may have the authority, relationships and access to data to implement positive changes in specific disciplines. One example of an organization actively engaged with this mission is the Research Advisory Group of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences.

The report "The Role of Scientific Societies in STEM Faculty Workshops" recommended by Charles Henderson in his contribution is a great resource that provides insights into faculty professional development workshops across STEM disciplines.

The December/January question:

How does your professional organization try to lead positive change? What changes have your professional organization led or you would like to see them lead? More

Beyond the Diversity Status Quo

Posted: Nov 2 2017 by

Stephen Secules
Florida International University

Stephen Secules, University of Georgia

The arc of history is long but it bends towards freedom. - Martin Luther King Jr.

Most of us who work in equity and inclusion have an orientation towards wanting to make progress towards systemic change. There is a shared acknowledgement of past injustice, present struggle, and persistent hope. Consistent with the ASCN, those who work in equity and inclusion in higher education are often seeking long term, sustainable transformations of their institutions.

And yet, higher education institutions also prize stability and can be remarkably slow to change. Equity and inclusion concerns get framed as issues for committees and task forces, which eventually become standing entities rather than forces empowered to make radical change. Diversity work feels at risk to budget cuts and to voicing unpopular truths. Overworked and underfunded, the point people for equity and inclusion in an institution can take up somewhat conservative goals: retaining individuals who are underrepresented in a discipline can turn into a standing effort to at least not lose the little bit of diversity left in the department. Although its proponents are often oriented towards transformation, it can seem like higher educational diversity work is far removed from the work of systemic change.

In my dissertation I made calls for going "Beyond Diversity as Usual" in undergraduate engineering work, using new research approaches and new ways of conceptualizing institutional practice (Secules, 2017a). Here are a few directions from my work and others' that may help move towards systemic change in the institutional diversity landscape: More

How can we help change leaders understand how measurement and data can be used?

Posted: Oct 17 2017 by

David Bressoud
Macalester College

David Bressoud, Macalester College

ASCN Working Group 4: Demonstrating Impact is trying something new. This group's mission is to identify, explain, and disseminate information on metrics that hold the potential to document, foster, accelerate, and communicate systemic change. Good questions are a great way to share and expand knowledge. Each month a question of interest and value to the higher education community will be sent to the working group members. Responses will be collated and posted on the ASCN blog. We hope that this will lead to beneficial collaborations not just among the members of the working group, but also across the network, and will reach the larger higher education community interested in systemic change.

The assumption behind this group is that measurement and data are effective mechanisms for facilitating change. The question for this month has two parts.

How can we help change leaders understand how measurement and data can be used? Can you give an example from your own experience where this has happened?

Below are the first three responses received. Please use comment section to respond to the question and to engage in a discussion about the current responses. If there is a link or citation that you think would be of value to other readers, please include this as well.

In addition, if there are any questions you would like Demonstrating Impact Working Group to address, please email those to Inese, the ASCN Project Manager. More