Poster Session D

Our poster presentation is rooted in the outcomes for change agents who have driven curricular, pedagogical, and cultural change in science and math departments as part of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) at the University of British Columbia (UBC). We highlight the reflections of Science Teaching and Learning Fellows on their role as change agents in this long-term initiative and also discuss how the model of discipline-based education specialists has been scaled and sustained within our Science Centre for Learning and Teaching in more recent years. While the CWSEI and its model of department-based agents of change have appeared in earlier iterations of this conference, this work acts as a follow-up to earlier conclusions and scholarship (Chasteen et al., 2015; Chasteen & Code, 2018; Chasteen et al., 2020; Greenhoot et al., 2020; Wieman, 2017). Two key questions regarding the model are featured: 1) what impact does this type of position have on the change agent and their career trajectory, and 2) what happens at the institution after a 10-year initiative has concluded? In particular, we consider data collected from the agents of change themselves in a reflective survey and summary of subsequent career trajectories, as well as a look at how an ongoing, smaller-scale adaptation of this embedded model is currently organized and facilitated within our context. This poster will be of substantial interest to the various institutions that are currently involved or proposing this embedded type of model.

The Sloan Equity and Inclusion in STEM Introductory Courses (SEISMIC) collaboration brings together researchers, educators, and administrators across 10 large public research universities in the U.S. The collaboration is interdisciplinary by design, connecting scholars across STEM and non-STEM fields with a common goal of making introductory STEM courses equitable and inclusive. Grounded in Beach, Henderson, and Finkelstein's four categories of change strategies (2011) , SEISMIC aims to promote departmental and institutional change through developing a shared vision and motivating new policies. This collaboration works towards institutional change and transformation from four interrelated perspectives.

1. Our Measurement Working Group uses institutional data to characterize STEM courses across SEISMIC in terms of equity and inclusion.
2. Our Experiments Working Group utilizes classroom innovations to test out potential solutions to inequitable and exclusionary class structures.
3. Our Implementing Change Working Group works at the campus administration level, assessing how to communicate the equity problems we are observing and the potential solutions we are implementing. This group works to understand how institutional structures could support or hinder our change efforts.
4. Finally, our Constructs Working Group dives deeper into the foundations of our collaboration's work, helping us to understand what we mean by equitable and inclusive classrooms and what the realization of our goals would fully entail.

Together, these four SEISMIC perspectives contribute to our collaboration's understanding of effective approaches to studying equity and inclusion in STEM and transforming our institutions to be equitable and inclusive. This poster will break down the key efforts of each of our Working Groups, the tensions involved in interdisciplinary, inter-institutional work, and highlight how we can achieve SEISMIC change in higher education through the coordination of these four perspectives.

Mathematics graduate teaching assistants (MGTAs) make up part of both the current and future teaching force at the undergraduate level, however they are often not adequately prepared to teach in engaging, inclusive, and equitable ways. Without robust professional development (PD) for teaching that focuses on active, engaged teaching practices, MGTAs often end up replicating the lecture-based teaching practices that they have experienced and observed as students. This study aims to implement a PD program for MGTAs focused on engaged learning, inclusive teaching, and equity (ELITE PD). Our goal is to answer the following questions - How can the ELITE PD program support MGTAs to transform their teaching practices to be more engaging, inclusive, and equitable? And what identifiable aspects of departmental and institutional cultures inhibit or support sustainable change?

The ELITE PD program will span multiple years and be implemented at three collaborating institutions with differing contexts. MGTAs who participate in the program will be supported in making incremental changes to transform their teaching. Cohorts will be recruited from each institution and progress through a sequence of PD workshops, seminars, classes, and peer mentoring. To investigate aspects of the program, department, and institution that inhibit or support MGTAs as they transform their teaching, we will conduct surveys, interviews, and teaching observations with the participating MGTAs, other instructors, course coordinators, and department chairs. We will also collect comparison data from MGTAs, instructors, course coordinators, and department chairs at three institutions that will not be implementing the ELITE PD program. In addition, measures of student outcomes, such as learning gains and attitudes, will be tracked at all six collaborating and comparison institutions. We aim to provide a rich characterization of this change effort at the department and individual levels by using the lenses of the Four Frames and Theory of Planned Behavior, respectively.  

Teaching for PROWESS (TfP) is an NSF-funded project (DUE-2013493) led by the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges (AMATYC). Currently, the researchers and practitioners on the TfP project team are partnering with teams of mathematics faculty and administrators from two Phase 1 community colleges (six more community colleges will be selected to participate in Phase 2). The project fosters instructional practices that support active learning and that lead to changes in departmental-level practices that nurture faculty members' work on instructional change. TfP uses the operationalization of active learning in mathematics described by Laursen & Rasmussen (2019, p. 138): active learning of mathematics is supported by both teaching methods and classroom norms that promote: "(1) students' deep engagement in mathematical reasoning; (2) peer-to-peer interaction; (3) instructors' interest in and use of student thinking; and (4) instructors' attention to equitable and inclusive practices." Using examples from our work so far, we will illustrate the TfP project's theory of change that incorporates and synthesizes change theories that have informed other projects focused on instructional change. In addition to leveraging the principles of active learning in mathematics that ground a similar initiative focused on university mathematics departments (SEMINAL, NSF DUE-1624610), we use practices for developing departmental leaders of instructional change developed by members of the PULSE Community (see NSF DUE-1355771), and approach instructional change using the model of design-based implementation research developed within the MIST (see NSF ESI-0554535) project. What distinguishes TfP from other postsecondary change initiatives is the project's focus on the unique context of community colleges and the leading role that the professional organization of community college mathematics faculty, AMATYC, plays in recruiting participating colleges and supporting an emergent network of mathematics departments engaged in the work of instructional change towards active learning in mathematics.  

We theorize how departmental change can occur in relationship to teaching and learning with digital curricular resources. We situate our efforts within mathematics departments at two- and four- year institutions, focusing on College Algebra, a gatekeeping undergraduate mathematics course. We argue that digital resources can serve as catalysts for institutional change, via layering (Mahoney & Thelen, 2010) those resources into existing systems.

Employing a layering approach to change, stakeholders work to amend systems by working from within, adding new elements to existing systems, which in turn affect the way systems work. Johnson and colleagues (in press) have offered an instantiation of layering theory, Develop-Embed-Extend-Provide (DEEP), to explain how new digital resources can be leveraged to foster change within a single department. The digital resources are called "Techtivities," interactive online activities designed to foster students' conceptions of graphs as representing relationships between quantities. The research team has developed new digital resources, worked with instructors and departments to embed those resources into existing courses, then extended opportunities and provided supports for instructors to take up those resources and continue implementation.

As a next step, we are working to extend across four Hispanic Serving Institutions of different size and scope. To guide our efforts, we appeal to Communities of Transformation (CoTs) (Kezar et al., 2018), grounded in Mezirow's (1991) theory. CoTs have three key aspects: an engaging idea which can challenge the status quo, a space to carry out new practices embodying the idea, and a group with which to connect to maintain and sustain those new practices. A key aspect of Mezirow's theory is intentionality; to engage in new practices, not only do adults become aware of their own practices, they reflect on the conditions and results of those practices. We share our progress to date and invite questions and feedback.

APS-IDEA (the Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance of the American Physical Society) is an organizational change network (Singer et al. 2019) founded in 2019 with the mission to empower and support physics departments, laboratories, and other organizations to identify and enact strategies for improving equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). It will do so by establishing a community of transformation. With initial support from the APS Innovation Fund, this project currently engages 99 teams in physics organizations (US and some international physics departments, national or other large labs, and some physics research collaborations) totaling almost 1500 physicists and EDI advocates. The teams are grouped into twenty-one online learning communities each consisting of 4 to 5 teams having similar institutional context. These groups meet monthly with support from a facilitator to learn from and support each other in their goals of institutional transformation. The project has been developed by a Steering Committee of 11 people with input from an Advisory Board, facilitators, and team members.

APS-IDEA has a philosophy and project theory of change flowing from our vision and mission together with a set of four guiding principles:

• Practice shared leadership across differences in social power
• Center people whose identities are marginalized
• Utilize sensemaking to foster individual and organizational learning
• Implement research-based change-management methods from the social sciences

We are considering adding a fifth principle prioritizing building relationships before attempting to solve problems. In addition to these guiding principles, APS-IDEA's philosophy incorporates theories for achieving second-order organizational change (Kezar 2018) as well as elements of social movement organizations.

APS-IDEA has two main goals. The first is to foster empowered teams within physics organizations in the network. The second is to build a community of transformation (Kezar, Gehrke, and Bernstein-Sierra 2018) to address the deeply entrenched problems of inequity in the physical sciences.  

Undergraduate students often arrive unprepared for an environment where deep conceptual understanding, application, and synthesis are valued over memorization of facts. There are many metacognitive strategies to help students develop their ability to plan, monitor, and assess their understanding and performance. However, most faculty have limited experience doing so, since they typically have little formal preparation for teaching. While metacognition is sometimes woven into undergraduate curricula via first-year student seminars, it is likely to be more impactful when integrated directly into the courses in which it is most needed.

We promoted the use of metacognitive strategies within a faculty learning community (FLC) that was part of a biological sciences initiative to change the culture of teaching and learning. The FLC was composed of ~20 faculty members who taught the first four courses taken within the biological sciences curriculum. The long-term goal was to help students recognize evidence of their learning so that they would be more receptive to teaching approaches requiring active engagement.

We developed a series of professional development activities to increase faculty confidence in helping students develop greater metacognitive awareness. These consisted of resource materials, a full-day retreat, and regular bi-weekly meetings during which faculty shared their strategies to promote student metacognition. Faculty created a plan for introducing metacognitive activities into their courses. We later surveyed and interviewed faculty as to which of 23 metacognitive strategies they were employing and which strategies they were interested in learning more about. Faculty (n=17) varied considerably in the reported strategies used (4-20 strategies/person, M=9.3; SD=4.5) and the strategies they were interested in learning more about (0-16 strategies/person, M=3.5; SD=3.8). Faculty surveys and interviews suggested that the FLC promoted greater adoption of metacognitive strategies across the biological sciences by inspiring and assisting those who had less experience or confidence using student-centered pedagogies.  

Participating in experiential research is a robust strategy to encourage students to pursue advanced degrees in STEM fields. In 2019, the creation of the South Asian Health and Research (SAHARA) Group at New York University's School of Global Public Health served as one such learning space. SAHARA provides a platform for students and faculty for multidisciplinary research, facilitating reciprocal sharing of experience and expertise among students at all degree levels (undergraduates/Master's/Doctorate, postdoctoral fellows) and early-career to senior faculty. SAHARA experienced significant growth during the pandemic. SAHARA was founded with 5 members and now has 8 faculty and 30+ student members across schools and departments. SAHARA faculty identified "affinity groups;" projects have been developed by students within core affinity areas. Leadership for implementing projects is undertaken by students. Faculty mentors serve as facilitators to provide input and guidance. SAHARA serves as a research incubator, in which students identify and address a wide-range of critical public health topics with a particular focus on the underserved and understudied US subpopulation that are disproportionately impacted by infectious (COVID-19) and chronic diseases (diabetes, obesity). Students gain diverse skills, such as qualitative (interviewing and thematic coding) and quantitative (data acquisition, management, and analysis), project management and report-writing skills, and optimize their conference presentation skills. Technology is a unifying theme for this group of inter-generational scholars. Students are the primary navigators of social media-based research initiatives through which faculty strengthen their technological abilities. SAHARA provides a support structure and has created a sense of cohesion during the pandemic-related social isolation, while reinforcing the importance of community engagement. In conclusion, SAHARA is designed to identify, engage and prepare students to pursue advanced degrees and careers in public health. To this end, students have developed a stronger interest in scientific research, gained confidence, improved self-efficacy and strengthened collaborative skills.  

 This work discusses the need of changing the current structure of supporting services for STEM and Medicine (STEMM) programs and students at Universities at Shady Grove (USG) and proposes a new structural model. Through this work, first, an introduction to the needs of change is provided and three conceptual foundations: fundamental theories from organizational studies - Open System Theory and Contingency Theory (Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967), Network of STEM Education Centers (NSEC) and current research, and the stake holders' needs and suggestions, which shape this study are provided. Later the current state of STEMM programming and support at USG is shown and the difficulty of the current model through the lens of the conceptual foundations is discussed. Finally, the vision for the new structure and the new STEMM center structural model are proposed and Tichy's TPC Framework (1983) is suggested as an organization diagnostic model.
Universities at Shady Grove is a higher education center, and part of the University System of Maryland (USM). It is located in the heart of Montgomery County, which is home to many biotech and pharmaceutical companies and accordingly USG promises to "support workforce and economic development in the state" (from USG's mission statement). Nine universities from USM offer several undergraduate and graduate programs at the USG campus. Also, USG serves transfer undergraduate students. Considering the location and type of students at USG, the student population is very diverse and the majority belongs to nontraditional students. Like the other universities, USG has different centers and units to support the functionality of these nine university programs and the success of students.

Broadening participation in the engineering and scientific workforce is an important national goal that will increase the size of the US STEM enterprise, introduce new perspectives to address critical societal issues, and contribute to addressing inequity in STEM. In addition to attracting and retaining more students from underrepresented groups to engineering and computer science, it is important that all students are prepared to work with diverse groups of peers in an effective and inclusive manner. In our current work, we are incorporating targeted intervention activities into engineering and computer science courses to develop inclusive professional identities, which builds on theory of professional identity development. In addition to being technically savvy, inclusive professionals as those who are (a) inclusive in their behavior in teams, (b) cognizant of the benefits diversity can provide in problem-solving, and (c) mindful of a wide variety of consumers in designing products and services in addition to being technically savvy. We are currently intervening at four campuses: two R1 institutions, 1 R2, and 1 masters granting institution.

In this poster session, we will highlight some of the activities we use in engineering and computer sciences courses. The activities take multiple forms: homework assignments, in-class activities and discussions, and required out-of-class experiences. Each activity relates to one or more aspects of inclusive professional identity as defined above. We will also include potential issues to consider when implementing inclusion activities in engineering and computer science classrooms. Further, we will highlight adaptations of the assignments by campus, discipline, and year in school (lower-level courses, upper-level courses).

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under the awards #(redacted for review). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.  

Participation in undergraduate research experiences (UREs) correlates with success in STEM careers. Research gives students practical experience in problem-solving, which is often the defining aspect of a STEM career. Key student outcomes include setting criteria for decisions, building knowledge, gains in scientific practice, and expertise in understanding literature. Students practice expressing their ideas in both oral and written settings and collaborating with one another; advances are made via teams of people contributing in various areas of expertise. Almost all modern scientific research has a significant digital technology component, which is often best learned in dealing with real-world problems. Undergraduate experience also promotes diversity in the workforce.

Many of our students have difficulty finding a research group or mentor. They may not understand how to approach a professor, lack the self-confidence to do so, or may be missing skills that would make them an attractive candidate. It is vital to continue encouraging students toward research careers.

At our institutions, we have developed programs that can be offered online to meet this goal (Research Rookies, High Point University; Research Recruits, Georgia State University). Peer mentors are available to help students. These programs promote research skills and offer students a competitive edge as they seek to find a research group that matches their interests. We will present details of these programs as prototypes that other institutions can tailor to their specific situations and student bodies.

Problem-solving skills, familiarity with the literature, collaboration strategies, and writing and presentation experience all lead to a good job in the desired field. We will present results related to the career competencies that ~400 GSU STEM alumni report they learned via UREs. These can be used to design research readiness programs that are structured around meaningful career impact.

 George Mason's STEM Accelerator program was created by the College of Science (COS) in 2011 to increase the success of undergraduate students. The goals of the STEM Accelerator program are:

1. increase enrollment in COS (especially among under-represented groups)
2. increase retention rates within the college
3. decrease time to graduation
4. aid our students in obtaining work in a STEM field.

We run a successful Learning Assistant program (linked to University of Boulder), have many outreach opportunities for potential Mason students, we run camps that support incoming freshmen, and provide many enrichment opportunities for Mason COS students.

Accelerator-run summer camps aid recruitment, enable freshmen success, and help retention in science and math. Faculty grants and outside support enable us to provide camps at minimal expense and recruitment supports ethnic, gender and financial diversity. FOCUS Camp (Females of Color Underrepresented in STEM) is a one-week long summer camp for rising 6th, 7th and 8th graders. Participants exercise their critical thinking skills and engage in creative problem-solving activities that foster interests in technology, engineering, forensic sciences and mathematics. FOCUS Academy for high school female students is a hands-on, residential camp with STEM workshops and professional development activities that prepare students for college. Math Boot Camp and STEM Bridge camps are hands-on camps that introduce incoming freshmen to campus life, build confidence in math and science skills, and prepare students for their first year as a Mason STEM students.

This diversity of programs are made possible as the STEM Accelerator program is an independent unit with seven faculty members from six STEM disciplines (Math (2), Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Geology, Forensic Science). Accelerator faculty teach half time in their departments and work half time for the Accelerator during the academic year; they work full time for the Accelerator during the summer.

The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the development, implementation, and results of the first cohort of STEM Peer Mentors placed in first-year STEM seminar courses. The goal of this project is to improve retention in STEM and at the university by providing upperclassman role models for students by providing additional support for first-year students' transition to college life and to their major. While a normal teaching assistant for a course would help with course specific content, our Peer Mentors assist our seminar instructors on topics relating to the first-year experience, such as study skills, organization techniques, and 4-year planning. While instilling essential learning skills, STEM Peer Mentors will also build a sense of belongingness and community within the STEM disciplines by serving as a friendly face as well as a liaison to the many STEM extracurricular activities available on campus.

Our secondary goal is to develop STEM Peer Mentors into leaders within their departments through research-based training. In addition to mentoring responsibilities, Peer Mentors participate in a STEM leadership course and monthly group meeting to develop their leadership skills and learn effective high impact practices. This program includes close coordination and collaboration between the university STEM Center and five STEM departments (Computer Science, Mathematics & Statistic, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, Geology, & Engineering Technology), including first-year advisors and faculty.

The presentation will explain the developmental process of the STEM Peer Mentors, the changes made to the program for virtual/hybrid courses, the first semester implementation and outcomes, and the ongoing assessment as the project continues. We leveraged the unique position of our center to bring together multiple stakeholders across positions (advisors & faculty), departments, and colleges. In this poster we present the process of organizing, obtaining buy-in, evaluating, gaining feedback, and ultimately revising the program during the first year.  

 NE STEM 4U supports the Omaha Metropolitan area with a high-quality STEM pipeline program, while fostering equity within STEM via on-site learning models and purposeful inclusion of persons traditionally excluded due to race or ethnicity (PEERs). The program provides pre-professional training to undergraduates for direct preparation of employment post-graduation, while also synergistically providing K-8 youth with an afterschool STEM learning experience. The program has supported students with fellowships, to promote equitable participation. We are eager to investigate how this model can be replicated with fidelity, as described here in our two replication sites, and in other regions of the country. Our aim was to assess replication of NE STEM 4U at other higher education institutions by using the normalization process theory. First, to determine the impact on undergraduate participants in the program, we followed a phenomenological framework via collection of qualitative data to capture the challenges and important aspects of the NE STEM 4U program from the perspectives of the students. We collected undergraduate insights via focus groups (n=16), interviews (n=16), and reflection surveys (n=12). Secondly, we assessed the impact of the replication model on participants. Specifically, the focus groups and interviews each included semi-structured interviews with open-ended guiding question where undergraduates described what they thought impacted the favorable outcomes or challenges associated with replicating the NE STEM 4U program at their institutions. We analyzed the transcripts using coding to identify emergent themes. Ultimately, we identified 1) Flexibility (21.22%), 2) Student Engagement (i.e. Youth) (19.53%), 3) Classroom Management (i.e. also pertaining to youth) (19.31%), and 4) Communication (15.71%) as critical themes of the replication process perceived by students, suggesting that the NE STEM 4U program can be a national model for other higher education institutions to follow for STEM access, equity, and inclusion benefits.

There is ample evidence in the literature [references will be given on the poster] that engaging undergraduate students in effectively mentored research, scholarship, and/or creative activity aids in the development of their scholarly identity, retention to degree and successful launch to their professional career path. The two main challenges that many institutions face are how to make this experience integral and integrated into the students' degree programs for ALL students while also making it integral and integrated into faculty workload expectations. The goal of integrating these experiences into degree plans and faculty workload distributions makes this a systemic institutional change goal.

This poster will describe our experience with, and our plans for, integrating Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) [will give references on the poster] into undergraduate degree plans and into faculty workload distributions as a change strategy to ensure equitable, accessible, and inclusive experiential learning for all students. In brief, VIP is a curricular intervention that has the following central tenets at Boise State: It is
Tied to the authentic scholarship of the faculty member
Curricular so it is available to all
Accessible - at the intro level there are no prerequisites - you prove you can do the work by doing the work rather than by prior experience
Vertical - more senior students mentor and onboard the entering students
Cross-disciplinary whenever possible - students are not limited by major and faculty are encouraged to team with others from other disciplines;
And it counts - both for students (in their degree plan) and for faculty (in their workload expectations).

Our poster will include examples of some innovative ways that illustrate how we are achieving these tenets at Boise State including how we are fully integrating VIP into degree plans from first year through to disciplinary capstone experiences; while also building it into faculty workload distributions.