Learning from Evaluation of Effective Teaching Event: Perspectives on Aligning Incentives
Christine Broussard, University of La Verne; 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 heard from working group leaders Christine Broussard, Kadian Callahan, and Holly Cho, and a special guest, Susan Elrod. We were fortunate to have 100 participants join us for the session as well, who represented 77 different institutions. The purpose of this blog post is to give brief highlights regarding what we learned from this event. We recommend that if the topic and event interests you, please watch the recording and access the resources on the event page.

Happy National Mentoring Month!
Patricia Marsteller, Emory University
Since Odysseus left Mentor in charge of his family, estates, and his son, the art and science of mentoring has been critical to guiding career and educational development. Like Mentor, I aim to be a wise and trusted counselor, guide, guardian, and teacher or as the title of a widely read book indicates, an Adviser, Teacher, Role Model, Friend (National Academies of Sciences, 1997). I have learned that mentoring is an alliance between people and that both mentors and mentees benefit from agreements about how the relationship will evolve and how to include social support, career development, and growth. With faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates, mentoring often involves getting to know the whole person, their aims and aspirations, and their qualms about the future. Connecting students to the right resources or empowering them to bring up difficult questions with their faculty or research mentors requires that you be open, listen carefully, and know them as persons.

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.

How can we help change leaders understand how measurement and data can be used?
David Bressoud, Macalester College
ASCN Working Group 4: Demonstrating Impact is trying something new. This group's mission is to identify, explain, and disseminate information on metrics that hold the potential to document, foster, accelerate, and communicate systemic change. Good questions are a great way to share and expand knowledge. Each month a question of interest and value to the higher education community will be sent to the working group members. Responses will be collated and posted on the ASCN blog. We hope that this will lead to beneficial collaborations not just among the members of the working group, but also across the network, and will reach the larger higher education community interested in systemic change. The assumption behind this group is that measurement and data are effective mechanisms for facilitating change. The question for this month has two parts. How can we help change leaders understand how measurement and data can be used? Can you give an example from your own experience where this has happened? Below are the first three responses received. Please use comment section to respond to the question and to engage in a discussion about the current responses. If there is a link or citation that you think would be of value to other readers, please include this as well. In addition, if there are any questions you would like Demonstrating Impact Working Group to address, please email those to Inese, the ASCN Project Manager.

Do I want to be recognized? Reflections on my experience with (Dis)Ability and working in Higher Education
Paul Artale, Henry Ford Community College
My name is Paul. I was born missing fingers and have funny arms. I am ok with it. There really isn't much that I can't do and I have learned to adapt. People who looked at me probably thought I could never play college football but yeah...I did that. I even coached it for a while. I loved my time working in athletics and although I looked different, I never felt out of place or discriminated against. I was just Paul Artale, football guy, and keeping teams from scoring on us was the most important thing in the world. I bring up football because being an athlete (and the lessons learned from it) are still very prominent pieces of my identity. Disability is a complex and nuanced identity. Disability is not a primary, or even secondary identity for many people with a disability. My athletic identity, ethnicity, and nationality (Canadian) are far more prevalent in my life. On a good day, it is something I don't think about much about. On a rare bad day it is something that I repress. Disability is often left out of discussions about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) because individuals with disabilities frequently do not prioritize their disability identity, or leave it completely out of conversations because it is a secondary or tertiary identity. Another reason is that disability is often perceived as a medical condition; a person has a condition, they adapt, they persist, and they almost forget they had a disability in the first place.

What advice about the use of measurement would you give to a department chair?
Pamela Brown CUNY New York City College of Technology Pamela Brown
I was invited to participate in the Accelerating Systematic Change Network (ASCN) Workshop, held at the HHMI in the summer of 2016 and have since continued collaborating with Working Group 4, with the goal of shedding light on using data to drive change – identifying, explicating and disseminating sources of information. I have served as the Associate Provost at New York City College of Technology, CUNY, a minority serving, public, urban college, for the last 5 years, after having served as the Dean of Arts and Sciences for 6 years. Following are my responses to the guiding questions forwarded by the working group's leadership.

Busynessgirl Blog
Busynessgirl Blog Blog related to teaching and learning, by Maria Anderson. Suggested Citation

Science 2.0 blog
Science 2.0 blog Shorter summaries of a think piece by Carl Wieman about what the optimized university would look like, which addresses issues of efficiency. Suggested Citation Wieman, C. (2008, July 28). ...

live science blog
live science blog Short summaries of a think piece by Carl Wieman about what the optimized university would look like, which addresses issues of efficiency. Suggested Citation Wieman, C. (2008, July 25). New ...