The Great Resilience: Notes on a Discussion Series to Cultivate Resilience for STEM
Holly Kelchner, Carleton College
Higher education was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and as a result, many faculty, administrators, and staff quit their jobs. This Great Resignation produced upheaval at many institutions across the nation. Looking for a space to find hope and a positive outlook in the midst of instability, the Aligning Incentives with Systemic Change working group engaged in a series of discussions about resilience. During spring 2023, we looked for ways to cultivate personal and organizational stability in the face of the Great Resignation and its impacts on higher education.

Themes in the National Discussion on Reforming STEM Teaching Evaluation
Ann Austin, Michigan State University
The January 2021 National Dialogue on Reforming Stem Teaching Evaluation in Higher Education, hosted by the National Academies of Sciences Roundtable on Systemic Reform in Undergraduate Stem Education, in collaboration with AAU, APLU, ACSCN, and the TEval Project, involved faculty and administrative leaders from a variety of institutional types in very engaged conversation about teaching evaluation and innovative institutional projects. The lively conversation was evidence of the growing interest nationally in identifying models for more wholistic, effective, and inclusive forms of teaching evaluation as well as resources for initiating campus-wide discussions about reform in teaching evaluation.

Instructional Change Teams: An Exploratory Model
Amreen Thompson, Texas State University-San Marcos
Over the past several years, our research team has been investigating factors that influence how instructional change teams collaborate to improve undergraduate STEM instruction. Our research revolves around a model we have developed to examine and interpret the effectiveness of instructional change teams in higher education. We define an instructional change team as a group of three or more instructors or other stakeholders who come together regularly to work on course design or redesign. This post will discuss the development and current state of our instructional change teams model.

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.

Learning from Evaluation of Effective Teaching Event: Change Leaders Perspectives
Madhura Kulkarni, Northern Kentucky University; Rachel Renbarger, Western Michigan University
At the end of August, three ASCN working groups came together to put on an event called, "Evaluation of effective and inclusive teaching: How can teaching and learning center professionals be involved in change for social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion?" (We will refer to social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as JEDI for ease throughout this post.) We recommend that people interested in the event watch the recording and access the resources on the event page, but the purpose of this blog post is to highlight what we learned from this event so that other change agents can implement the findings into their work immediately. Big questions that we wanted to focus on included the who, what, and how of transforming teaching. To understand how change happens, and how we might help create teaching evaluation change on our campuses, we asked Dr. Susan Elrod to describe her work modeling institutional change.

Change theory and theory of change: what's the difference anyway?
Daniel L. Reinholz; and Tessa C. Andrews
This essay describes the connections between a theory of change and change theory and provides examples of how change theory can inform a project's theory of change.

Active learning narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math
Elli J. Theobald; Mariah J. Hill; Elisa Tran; Sweta Agrawal; E. Nicole Arroyo; Shawn Behling; Nyasha Chambwe; Dianne Laboy Cintrón; Jacob D. Cooper; Gideon Dunster; Jared A. Grummer; Kelly Hennessey; Jennifer Hsiao; Nicole Iranon; Leonard Jones II; Hannah Jordt; Marlowe Keller; Melissa E. Lacey; Caitlin E. Littlefield; Alexander Lowe; Shannon Newman; Vera Okolo; Savannah Olroyd; Brandon R. Peecook; Sarah B. Pickett; David L. Slager; Itzue W. Caviedes-Solis; Kathryn E. Stanchak; Vasudha Sundaravardan; Camila Valdebenito; Claire R. Williams; Kaitlin Zinsli; and Scott Freeman
This study is a comprehensive meta-analysis of research on the influence of active and traditional learning approaches on STEM course outcomes (exam scores and course failure rates) for underrepresented students. Time-intensive active learning experiences contributed to reduced achievement gaps in exam scores and pass rates. Researchers concluded that deliberate active-learning course designs and inclusive teaching contribute to increasing equity in STEM. Although this study does not discuss cost-benefits, it affirms the value of investing in pedagogical enhancements to increase student retention and success. In this case, the benefits are continuous tuition revenue through student retention and the moral imperative of reducing equity gaps.

COVID-19 Recommended Resources from ASCN
Kate White Temple University Kate White (Western Michigan University), ASCN Research Director
Updated: 6/4/20 We know that many of you are dealing with changes at your institutions as we all come together to flatten the curve. Many organizations have been sharing resources and guidance for remote work, online teaching, and more. In this post you'll find links to some recommended resources that we have collected. Our regular events (webinars, working group meetings, etc.) are continuing -- please contact us if you would like to get involved! We will continue to update this post as needed.

Evaluating the Return on Investment in Higher Education: An Assessment of Individual- and State-Level Returns
Kristin Blagg; Erica Blom

Leadership on the line, with a new preface: Staying alive through the dangers of change.
× Leadership on the line, with a new preface: Staying alive through the dangers of change. This book describes leadership skills needed to thrive in positions that require disrupting the status quo to ...