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.

When it comes to teaching, is there a universal law that you cannot save time or use it differently?
Judith Ramaley Portland State University Lorne Whitehead University of British Columbia Judith Ramaley and Lorne Whitehead
This blog post is about teaching, and time, a topic that we briefly discussed during one of our ASCN Working Group 2 meetings. We begin with time. Throughout history, people have pondered it in many ways. One way is to study the quantities of time required for specific tasks in order to find ways to improve overall results. This can be helpful because time is a limited resource that is best spent wisely. For example, when this approach is applied to manufacturing, it can yield significant benefits for companies and their customers. In situations like this, efforts to save time and improve efficiency make sense. Not all situations have that character. In a second category of situations, most people don't find it appropriate to quantify and optimize time and results. Consider, for example, social interactions. We can't really measure them, and even if we could, who would want to? Many seek social interactions but very few wish to measure them or be so measured.

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.

Looking Back and Looking Forward
Inese Berzina-Pitcher, Western Michigan University
Welcome to the ASCN Blog! Our vision for the ASCN blog is to become a platform to engage with scholars and practitioners, those who are already involved with ASCN work, as well as the wider community of researchers and practitioners who are engaged in or supporting pedagogical, curricular, and culture change in higher education. The blog will serve three purposes, it will: 1. Inform stakeholders about the work of ASCN (updates from the working groups, highlights about resources on our site, information about our meetings and conferences, etc.). 2. Disseminate knowledge and expertise of scholars and practitioners by encouraging guest posts that align with the vision of the ASCN, show clear connection to our work, and contribute to learning and sharing knowledge or expertise. 3. Facilitate discussions about relevant frameworks, articles, books, and tools that align with the vision and principles of ASCN but also support change agents everywhere. The ASCN blog is a place where ideas expressed in posts and comments are based on research and evidence, and contribute to the development of new knowledge about change in higher education. It is mid-December, so it seems fitting that we start our first blog post by sharing what we have accomplished

Catalyzing Institutional Transformation: Insights from the AAU STEM Initiative
Catalyzing Institutional Transformation: Insights from the AAU STEM Initiative The authors describe the development of AAU's Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative, the approach AAU took to building this ...

2019 Transforming Institutions Conference Report
Kate White, Temple University
The 2019 ASCN Transforming Institutions Conference brought together more than 140 researchers, faculty, change agents, and administrators to focus on transforming undergraduate education. We were pleased to include many excellent presentations, posters, workshops, and symposia in our program, some organized into our four tracks: aligning faculty incentives with systemic change (ASCN working group 6), change leadership (ASCN working group 3), equity and inclusion (ASCN working group 5), and guiding theories of change (ASCN working group 1). We'd like to share some highlights from the conference and feedback from our attendees -- keep reading for more!

Investing in Success: Cost-Effective Strategies to Increase Student Success
Jane Wellman; and Rima Brusi

Competency-based education: A study of four new models and their implications for bending the higher education cost curve
Donna M. Desrochers; Richard L. Staisloff
In this report the authors assess CBE programs at four institutions by considering business models, costs, etc. and what is required from institutions to 'get to breakeven'. The four institutions anticipate breaking even with their programs by the fifth year, and they project that by the sixth year these programs will be operating at half the cost of the traditional academic programs. The article describes how an evaluation of the competency- based education business model must include considerations regarding price, efficiency (academic delivery structure, staff ratios, and compensation), and scale (student recruitment, enrollment, and retention).

'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.

Learning from Change Leaders: Reflections from the 2023 Transforming Institutions Conference
Casey Wright, Western Michigan University; Madhura Kulkarni, Northern Kentucky University
The Change Leaders working group led a workshop and hosted a breakfast conversation to bring together emergent and established change leaders at the 2023 Transforming Institutions Conference in Minneapolis, June 12-13, 2023. At the workshop, we met change leaders who are hard at work on their campuses in roles as faculty members, post-docs, educational technology staff, center for teaching and learning staff, STEM center staff, and university administrators.