Supporting Departmental Change Efforts in Physics with Departmental Action Leadership Institutes (DALIs)

The APS Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3) project aims to help physics programs respond to challenges with a collection of knowledge, experience, and proven good practice disseminated via the EP3 Guide. As part of the project, we are piloting Departmental Action Leadership Institutes (DALIs), which support faculty members and their departments in implementing significant changes to their undergraduate programs. Starting in January 2021, two faculty members from each of five departments joined the first DALI. These faculty members were charged with creating and leading cross-constituency teams in their departments to engage in a change effort, following the Departmental Action Team (DAT) model. This DALI started with an intensive virtual kickoff workshop, followed by twice monthly meetings and the opportunity for individual consultations with the DALI facilitators. These activities were designed to to help the DALI participants learn about and implement critical aspects of engaging in a change effort (e.g., defining a vision, setting goals, gathering and analyzing data, assessing results), of supporting a high-functioning team (e.g., recruiting diverse team members, managing conflict and power differentials), and of interfacing with stakeholders outside the team (e.g., cultivating allies, managing resistance). These are all practices that align with the literature on organizational change and effective teams, both within and beyond the higher education context. In this presentation, we will describe the goals, structure, and curriculum of the pilot DALI. We will also present some initial feedback from our participants about their experiences with the DALI and with leading their change efforts and describe our long-term plans to systematically document the impacts of DALI on participants and their departments.