Critical Resources Database
Choose one of the critical resource collections:
Working Group 3: Change LeadersWorking Groups 2 & 4: Costs, Benefits, and Demonstrating ImpactWorking Group 6: Aligning Faculty WorkBecome an ASCN Speaker » Submit a Resource »
Use the search or choose from a selection of topics below:
Results 21 - 30 of 59 matches
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.
Resource Type: Blog Post
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion
Evaluating New Approaches to Teaching and Learning in Undergraduate STEM Education
Kadian Callahan, Kennesaw State University
Over the last several years, there has been a push to rethink teaching and learning in undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. Two meta-analyses of studies on undergraduate STEM education revealed that traditional, teacher-centered approaches are not as effective as active learning approaches for fostering success in STEM for students broadly, and especially for traditionally underserved groups of students (Freeman et al., 2014; Theobald et al., 2020). Thus, there are ongoing efforts to shift toward using active learning and inclusive practices to ensure that all students are welcome and supported in STEM courses and programs. As we continue to work to enhance our instructional practices to meet the changing dynamics of STEM teaching and learning, we must also reconsider how we evaluate teaching excellence. Specifically, how do we ensure that the work that faculty do to actively engage students in learning and to create inclusive learning environments is captured in evaluations of teaching?
Resource Type: Blog Post
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.
Resource Type: Blog Post
Program Components: Professional Development:Course Evaluation, Institutional Systems:Evaluating Promotion and Tenure, Evaluating Teaching
National Dialogue Continues
Christine Broussard, University of La Verne
Our nation has a need for college-educated members of society with diverse backgrounds and perspectives to successfully address the big challenges of our time: social justice, public health, and economic security. How can we guarantee that the college education students receive is inclusive and effective? For many years institutions have used student ratings from end of course surveys to evaluate educational effectiveness and to make retention and promotion decisions regarding faculty. But this approach has done little to encourage the adoption and use of evidence-based teaching practices that improve student performance and retention, particularly for PEERs (persons excluded based on ethnicity or race). In fact, given the inherent biases of those surveyed and the discomfort experienced by learners in challenging learning scenarios and effective pedagogies, the opposite may occur. Faculty are rewarded for 'likes' instead of for fostering concrete learning, for making students comfortable instead of challenging their intellectual comfort zones in appropriate ways, and get limited feedback, if any, on how equitable and inclusive their classroom environments are. A shift toward meaningful evaluation of inclusive and effective teaching requires systemic change at the institutional level. It is not enough to redesign student surveys to extract feedback on professional aspects of teaching (though that's a good starting point), we must also integrate thoughtful and informed peer evaluation, and provide infrastructure for professional development and self-reflection.
Resource Type: Blog Post
Do you need a change theory?
Tessa Andrews, University of Georgia; Daniel Reinholz, San Diego State University
Do you have an innovative new approach to teaching? Are you an educator who is frustrated by the lack of support for new teaching methods? Are you an administrator trying to improve education on your campus? Although research has taught us a lot about how to improve teaching and learning, actually making these improvements a reality can be much more challenging. That is where change theory comes in.
Resource Type: Blog Post
'Eat Your Veggies' Research: Why I pursue qualitative research for an audience of quantitative-minded engineering educators
Stephen Secules, Florida International University
In conversations on equity and education, I often hear people claim a certain relationship between qualitative and quantitative research— qualitative research can explore new complex topics in depth, so that subsequent quantitative research can demonstrate the trend. Further, if you want to convince an engineering or STEM educator of something, that quantitative trend will be crucial. Since the educator audience values numbers, the qualitative descriptions or arguments will be perceived as anecdotal.
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion, Pedagogical Training, Cultural Competency
Shared leadership for student success at UW-Whitewater
Susan Elrod, Indiana University-South Bend; Jodie Parys, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater; Meg Waraczynski, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
Colleges and universities across the country are facing increasing pressure to enroll, retain and graduate more students at a time when the environment for higher education is competitive and often contentious. In order for institutions to be successful in these student success endeavors, everyone must work together. We are all familiar with shared governance as a central tenet of higher education but those processes apply primarily to policy development and decision-making. We argue that shared leadership is required as a holistic approach to goal development and implementation of strategic priorities that foster student and institutional success. In this model, both administrators and faculty/staff leaders play key roles that are essential to the long-term success and sustainability of student success initiatives. Administrators provide a framework for initiatives as they relate to the broader campus community; foster connections between individuals engaged in similar work; provide strategic support and remove barriers to progress; and hold the campus accountable for achieving shared goals. Shared leaders capitalize on their discipline expertise and commitment to student success and program outcomes to fill in the pieces of the framework. They utilize their classroom and program experience to design, test, and apply proposed solutions and also retain ownership of the initiatives and solutions.
Resource Type: Blog Post
Program Components: Institutional Systems, Supporting Students, Outreach
Building on the BOSE Report of Indicators for STEM Education
David Bressoud, Macalester College
As everyone probably knows by now, the National Academies have released their Indicators for Monitoring Undergraduate STEM Education. There clearly is much overlap with the charge to the Working Group on Demonstrating Change. We would appreciate informal discussion around two questions: Is there anything left for us to do? Assuming the answer to #1 is "yes," how can we shape our work so as to build on this report?
Resource Type: Blog Post
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion, Supporting Students:Academic Support, Professional Preparation
Beyond the Diversity Status Quo
Stephen Secules, Florida International University
The arc of history is long but it bends towards freedom. - Martin Luther King Jr. Most of us who work in equity and inclusion have an orientation towards wanting to make progress towards systemic change. There is a shared acknowledgement of past injustice, present struggle, and persistent hope. Consistent with the ASCN, those who work in equity and inclusion in higher education are often seeking long term, sustainable transformations of their institutions. And yet, higher education institutions also prize stability and can be remarkably slow to change. Equity and inclusion concerns get framed as issues for committees and task forces, which eventually become standing entities rather than forces empowered to make radical change. Diversity work feels at risk to budget cuts and to voicing unpopular truths. Overworked and underfunded, the point people for equity and inclusion in an institution can take up somewhat conservative goals: retaining individuals who are underrepresented in a discipline can turn into a standing effort to at least not lose the little bit of diversity left in the department. Although its proponents are often oriented towards transformation, it can seem like higher educational diversity work is far removed from the work of systemic change. In my dissertation I made calls for going "Beyond Diversity as Usual" in undergraduate engineering work, using new research approaches and new ways of conceptualizing institutional practice (Secules, 2017a). Here are a few directions from my work and others' that may help move towards systemic change in the institutional diversity landscape:
Resource Type: Blog Post
Program Components: Professional Development:Diversity/Inclusion
Do We Have the Courage for Systemic Change?
Jeanne Century
University of Chicago
Jeanne Century
In 1994, I was a graduate student. It was the onset of the "systemic change" era. Funders, professional organizations and education leaders alike were painting a picture of a new "paradigm"; a shift away from what was framed as a traditional conception of reform — individual programmatic efforts— to a more comprehensive, integrated, "systemic" approach (Fuhrman & Massell, 1992; St. John, 1993). As I wrote then, "this new language of reform is exciting; conjuring up images of a revolution in education that may finally have the strength to cure the ills of the weakened competitive spirit and "mediocrity," of our "nation at risk" of the last decade..." Twenty-three years later, as a member of Working Group One, I was asked to respond to the following prompt: What does systemic change mean to you? As I mulled this over, I reflected on all of the literature I had reviewed
Resource Type: Blog Post