What we wish we would have known about theories of change and change theory at the beginning
Laura Muller, The Jackson Laboratory; Melissa Eblen-Zayas, Carleton College
Six years ago when we first met, we were two individuals who identified a common challenge on our campuses – namely supporting students who arrived with varying comfort and experience using quantitative (Q) skills in STEM and social science contexts. Talking with others, we were eager to think about how we might collaborate to do better for our students. We wanted to make a change, but change theories or theories of change? We didn't know what those were! As we have learned about change strategies and change theory over the last six years, we've repeatedly come across ideas that make us think, "Wow, we wish we would have known this when we started this project!" This post is an effort to share some of what we've learned with other practitioners who might be trying to change things on their own campuses.

Funding Educational Change Projects: A Panel Discussion at the 2019 Transforming Institutions Conference
Kate White, Temple University
The panel on funding at the 2019 Transforming Institutions Conference featured two representatives from funding agencies: David Asai (Senior Director for Science Education, HHMI) and Andrea Nixon (Program Director, Division of Undergraduate Education and Co-Lead, Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) Program, NSF). Gita Bangera (Bellevue College, moderator) introduced our panelists, who started by discussing current initiatives at HHMI and NSF. David Asai presented HHMI's new competition in the Inclusive excellence initiative; Andrea Nixon discussed NSF's programs in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR Core Research and Building Capacity in STEM Educational Research/BCSER) and their new solicitation for Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) grants in the Institutional and Community Transformation Track. Our panelists answered audience questions and we share some of their responses below.

Start somewhere: Resources on equity and inclusion for STEM and higher education
Kate White Temple University Naneh Apkarian Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus Kate White (Western Michigan University), ASCN Research Director Naneh Apkarian (Western Michigan University)
These recent articles and resources are meant to serve as a starting point for learning about equity, inclusion, diversity, and justice - with a particular focus on addressing systemic anti-Black racism - within STEM and higher education. This list of resources is long, but not by any means exhaustive. As change agents and scholars, we know that effecting change requires informed action. We hope you will use these and other resources to develop concrete and informed action plans. Please use the comments to share additional resources and concrete actions being taken by you and your institution. We also invite you to join the conversation in our Equity and Inclusion Working Group. If you would like to join, please fill out the form to Join the Network and indicate that you would like to join Working Group 5 (Equity & Inclusion). On Wednesday, June 10, we join the movement to #ShutdownSTEM.

Using project principles to anchor changing departments
Joel Corbo, University of Colorado Boulder Courtney Ngai, Colorado State University Gina Quan, San José State University Sarah Wise, University of Colorado Boulder
The Departmental Action Team (DAT) Project supports departments as they make changes to their undergraduate programs. Project team members use the DAT Project's six Core Principles to guide their decision-making around change efforts. In this post we share why a principles-based approach supports successful change. This post is a great introduction for our free upcoming webinar on Tuesday, March 30, 2021 about facilitating change using the DAT model. Register for the webinar here

Departmental Change: Sustaining Impacts
Joel Corbo, University of Colorado Boulder; Courtney Ngai, Colorado State University; Gina Quan, San José State University; Sarah Wise, University of Colorado Boulder
The Departmental Action Team (DAT) Project supports departments as they make changes to their undergraduate programs. In previous posts, we described the principles that underlie the DAT Project, the initial stages of DAT formation, and how DATs accomplish change initiatives with the support of facilitators. In about 70% of cases, departments that host DATs continue to catalyze change after external DAT facilitation ends, and sometimes even after the DAT itself ends. In this final post, we explore several ways DATs catalyze sustained impacts.

Departmental Change: Engaging in a Change Initiative
Joel Corbo, University of Colorado Boulder; Courtney Ngai, Colorado State University; Gina Quan, San José State University; Sarah Wise, University of Colorado Boulder
The Departmental Action Team (DAT) Project supports departments as they make changes to their undergraduate programs. In previous posts, we described the principles that underlie the DAT Project and the initial stages of DAT formation. In this post, we'll share some of what DATs and facilitators do as they engage in a change initiative together. If you are interested in learning more, we are leading a free interactive webinar (Tuesday, March 30, 12-1:30pm EST) about facilitating change using the DAT model. Register for the webinar.

Creating new knowledge about change by combining research-based knowledge with the wisdom of practice
Kadian Callahan, Kennesaw State University; Charles Henderson, Western Michigan University
One of the core ideas behind the formation of the Accelerating Systemic Change Network (ASCN) is to create and amplify knowledge by fostering interactions between two basic types of people who are working to improve postsecondary education: change researchers and change agents. While there is some overlap in these groups, they mostly operate independently. And, more importantly, each has access to different ideas and types of knowledge. Through knowledge creation and amplification, ASCN builds capacity within and across these two groups to more successfully enact change in undergraduate STEM education. Specifically, ASCN uses the model of a "Knowledge Creating Company." This way to think about business organizations was first published by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) who credited it for the success of Japanese companies in the 1980s and 1990s. It has since become highly influential in focusing businesses worldwide on the importance of knowledge and knowledge creation. In contrast to the Western approach to knowledge management, which views knowledge as explicit, Japanese companies place significant value on tacit knowledge.

Departmental Change: Starting an Initiative
Joel Corbo, University of Colorado Boulder; Courtney Ngai, Colorado State University; Gina Quan, San José State University; Sarah Wise, University of Colorado Boulder
The Departmental Action Team (DAT) Project supports departments as they make changes to their undergraduate programs through implementing DATs. This blog post is the second part of a four-part series on DATs, and describes the groundwork laid before a DAT officially forms in a department. Our first blog post describes our use of project principles. If you are interested in learning more, we are leading a free webinar (Tuesday, March 30, 12pm EST) about facilitating change using the DAT model. Register for the webinar.

A Framework for Assessing Teaching Effectiveness (FATE)
Shawn Simonson, Boise State University
In higher education, teaching evaluation is often inadequate and inaccurate, neither improving teaching directly nor incentivizing teaching improvement. Complicating this is that effective teaching is difficult to assess and one or two subjective measures do not accurately consider all aspects of teaching and are often nebulous without established standards. COVID-19 may actually have helped by drawing more attention to this and reducing resistance to change as people became uncomfortable with student course evaluations not telling the complete teaching story that faculty and departments want told.

Understanding how instructional change works
Stephanie Chasteen, University of Colorado at Boulder
Recommended article: "It's Personal: Biology Instructors Prioritize Personal Evidence over Empirical Evidence in Teaching Decisions," by Tessa Andrews and Paula Lemons, CBE-Life Sciences Education, 14 (2015). I am involved in several projects which aim to help faculty learn about and implement effective teaching practices. To design or evaluate such programs, it's useful to have a model of how faculty take up new teaching practices. I want to highlight an article by Andrews and Lemons which recently influenced my thinking. (Note that Tessa Andrews co-leads ASCN Change Theories working group). One model that is often used in faculty change projects is the Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations model, which suggests that in order to adopt a new idea a person must become aware of it, be persuaded that it is useful, decide to use it, implement it, and then decide to continue to use it