ASCN Mission and Goals
Mission
ASCN's mission is to establish a community that generates, curates, and propagates knowledge to support pedagogical, curricular, and culture change in higher education.
Goals
Goal 1: Establish a community for change agents and researchers who are actively involved in producing knowledge about change.
A. Hub Activities- Sub-goal H1.2: Active recruitment of members
- Active recruitment both researchers and change agents done with strong involvement of the steering committee
- Sub-goal H1.2: Active engagement of members
- Activity - National conference every two years
- Activity - Use of SERC platform, social media, and different communication devices to reach potential network members
- Sub-goal H1.3: Support efforts of working groups to share what they are doing with one another.
- Sub-goal H1.4: Legitimize scholarly work on systemic change.
- Sub-goal W1.1: Build a sub-community among people interested in their particular theme.
- Sub-goal W1.2: Consider how to share what they are doing with other ASCN working groups.
Goal 2: Generate and curate knowledge about promoting, supporting, and accelerating change.
A. Hub Activities- Sub-goal H2.1: Create an effective and sustainable support system for working groups of ASCN.
- Sub-goal W2.1: Address key questions regarding institutional change in higher education, initially defined as six important research areas: 1) guiding theories; 2) costs and benefits; 3) change leaders; 4) demonstrating impact, 5) equity and inclusion, and 6) aligning faculty work with systemic change.
- Activity - Each working group Identifies "where is the topic of this working group in a narrative arc that runs from needing more research through needing to engage the community to use what is known?"
- Activity - Each working group creates plans that will lead to progress along the narrative arc, ultimately resulting in more successful change strategies being used nationally. These might include:
- Synthesizing available information and identify gaps related to the topic.
- Motivating and/or conduct scholarly work to address knowledge gaps in the topic.
- Convening others working on the topic to engage in collaborative work.
- Finding ways to engage the larger community to use what is known.
Goal 3: Propagate knowledge about promoting, supporting, and accelerating change
A. Hub Activities- Sub-goal H3.1: Propagate knowledge that advances systemic change broadly.
- Activity - National conference every two years
- Activity - Run an annual Systemic Change Institute (targeted at institutional teams)
- Activity - Use of SERC platform, social media, and multiple communication mechanisms to reach network members
- Activity - Use of SERC platform, social media, and multiple communication mechanisms to reach the broader community outside of ASCN
- Activity - Engage in national-level activism to influence policy
B. Working Group Activities
- Sub-goal W3.1: Propagate knowledge around the working group topic.
- Activity - Provide content related to their working group to support the Hub-led propagation activities.
- Activity - Actively seek opportunities to publish and present the findings of their group.
- Activity - In some cases, if a working group has identified that there is a well developed body of knowledge within their topic, they may decide to engage in targeted propagation activities (analogous to those of the Hub) related to their topic.