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.

Communicating and Collaborating Across Disciplines
Judith Ramaley, Portland State University; Judith Ramaley
Those of us who are working on ways to attract students to the study of STEM fields must design a curriculum that prepares our students to understand and manage complex problems where scientific knowledge interacts with other ways of looking at the world. This means finding ways to work across disciplinary boundaries so that these problems can be studied in their broader social, political and environmental context. Boyd (2016, p. B4) argues that "if we really want to matter, we need to think critically about the questions we ask---and the questions we don't ask---and what influences that distinction." The questions we ask have powerful effects on how we design the curriculum, what we expect of ourselves and our students and how we work together with colleagues in our own department as well as other fields to prepare our graduates to live and work in a changing and uncertain world.

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.

Announcing the Curated Teaching Evaluation Change Initiative Repository
Casey Wright, Western Michigan University; Carlos Goller, North Carolina State University; Sharon Homer-Drummond, PhD, Tri-County Technical College; Stephanie Salomone, University of Portland; Christine Broussard, University of La Verne
The Aligning Faculty Incentives with Systemic Change Working Group is excited to report we havecurated a repository of teaching evaluation change initiatives to support national efforts at the systemic change of faculty teaching evaluation.  Teaching evaluation is an area of critical focus for systemic change efforts to align undergraduate students' experience in STEM courses with best practices for inclusive learning (NASEM, 2020; Boyer 2030 Commission, 2023). Since the academy is deeply resistant to change (Wise et al., 2022), it is critical to share innovations that have successfully impacted teaching evaluation with the systemic change community (e.g., Simonson et al., 2023). We have created the Curated Teaching Evaluation Initiative Repository to meet this need. For the repository, we define an initiative as a concerted program or set of related efforts that have been undertaken to change the policies, processes, or practices around teaching evaluation. These initiatives are not limited to resources for individual faculty to change their teaching practices but instead describe efforts that have been successful in creating systemic change.

Inclusive Approaches to Reviewing Scholarship: A New Guide
Naneh Apkarian, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus; Kathy Quardokus Fisher, University of Notre Dame; Brian Burt, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The ASCN Guiding Theories Working Group is working on answering the question "How might we better support people's use of theories, models, and scholarship in their planned systemic change efforts?" The Breaking Down Silos working meeting (previously discussed on the ASCN blog) brought together scholars to discuss and organize existing theories and models of change from scholarship related to change in undergraduate STEM education. One of the discussions focused on representation, which in turn led to the development of the Guide to Inclusion Awareness in the Organization of Knowledge (Acrobat (PDF) 216kB May28 19), which is the subject of this post. At Breaking Down Silos, the question of inclusion and exclusion arose. That is, what literature was included in the body of work considered to be relevant, and what was left out? Who was represented at the meeting (and in the working group), and who was not? Why? What are the resulting implications of these boundaries for our work? These questions are relevant across many contexts, and our discussions over the working meeting and beyond led to the creation of the Guide to Inclusion Awareness in the Organization of Knowledge (Acrobat (PDF) 216kB May28 19) document. It is a set of guiding questions to support inclusion and transparency in the creation of scholarly work. In this blog, we highlight and discuss some of the concerns about developing typographies or literature reviews that led to the development of this guide.

Featured Case Studies at the 2017 SMTI/ASCN Workshop on Diversity and Inclusion
Inese Berzina-Pitcher Western Michigan University Inese Berzina-Pitcher
Creating an Institutional Culture of Accountability to Ensure Diversity and Inclusion in STEM Fields × Dr. Christine A. Stanley, Vice President and Associate Provost; Professor, Higher Education Administration, Texas A&M University will be the opening speaker on TAMU's Diversity Plan. TAMU's Diversity Plan, which was developed in 2010 and is executed by the Office for Diversity, established the expectation that all academic and administrative units submit annual reports to monitor and evaluate progress toward accountability, climate, and equity efforts.

2017 SMTI-ASCN Workshop on Diversity and Inclusion
Inese Berzina-Pitcher Western Michigan University Inese Berzina-Pitcher
June 24–25, 2017 Hotel Monteleone, New Orleans, Louisiana Start time: 3:00 pm CT, June 24 End time: 5:30 pm CT, June 25 Registration is closed. This summer, in partnership with the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) ( This site may be offline. ) , we are organizing the 2017 SMTI/ASCN Workshop on Diversity and Inclusion . The APLU Science and Mathematics Teaching Imperative (SMTI) is a community of faculty, department chairs, deans, and provosts who are engaged in improving STEM teaching and teacher preparation. This workshop immediately follows the NSEC 2017 National Conference . The goal of the 2017 SMTI/ASCN Workshop on Diversity and Inclusion is to advance a dialog on diversity and inclusion in undergraduate STEM education between practitioners transforming institutions and researchers who are studying systemic change at higher education institutions.

How do we recruit, support, and retain diverse faculty? Reflections from our discussion series
Patricia Marsteller, Emory University
Equity, inclusion, diversity, and justice are foundational in effective higher education settings, including STEM disciplines. Our ASCN working group brings together communities whose work focuses on justice, equity, inclusion, and diversity (JEDI) in higher education. In spring 2021, we focused on a series of informal conversations centered on recruiting diverse faculty. In the series we discussed: Why recruiting diverse faculty is important. Promising practices for department leaders, such as creating detailed and inclusive recruitment plans, utilizing cluster hires, broadening searches, using faculty search advocates, and providing JEDI education for faculty and for search committees. Working with other institutional actors (e.g., data analysts, deans) for institutional and departmental reflections, hiring plans, and data needs.

Building Structural Equity: What do our organizations need?
Nita Kedharnath, Henry Ford Community College; Rachel Renbarger, Western Michigan University
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.

Join an ASCN working group!
Kate White Temple University Kate White (Western Michigan University), ASCN Research Director
Have you been considering joining one of our working groups, but aren't sure where to start? Here you'll find updates on what each of our groups is working on and more information on how to get involved in 2020. You can join any of our working groups by filling out this short form. Keep reading to learn more about how we're exploring theories of change; the costs, benefits, and impact of change; change leadership; equity and inclusion in systemic change; aligning faculty work with change; and learning spaces.