My Interest in ASCN: Noah Finkelstein

University of Colorado at Boulder

Prior Organizational Change Work

Co-Director of our Center for STEM Learning
PI on our AAU Demonstration Site: STEM Institutional Transformation Action Research Project (SITAR at CU);
Co-Director Network of STEM Education Centers (NSEC with APLU)
Board of Trustees, Higher Learning Commission (soon to chair the accreditation committee)

Research:

On systemic change. Two main veins:

1. Studying STEM Education Change with Henderson and Beach, e.g. Facilitating change in undergraduate STEM instructional practices: An analytic review of the literature
2. Research on Institutional Change strategies, through the CU AAU initiative (Corbo, Reinholz, Dancy, Deetz, and Finkelstein):, e.g. Framework for transforming departmental culture to support educational innovation

How ASCN Can Contribute to my Work

I'm spending a decent amount of time considering how study and make a scholarly approach to institutional level change. This community will advance such efforts.

I'm also increasingly getting involved in administrative level decisions (and dipping my toe into administrative roles). This community will help me decide whether I should cut that toe off.

I'm also rather involved in policy maneuvers (e.g. on accreditation for HLC, working on HEA and COMPETES, etc.)

How I Can Contribute to ASCN

As above perspectives from research, practice-based efforts at CU-Boulder (where we are having some success), and consideration of the national-level levers