Initial Publication Date: April 7, 2021

Go big or go home: Developing your institution's capacity to transform STEM education

Monday, June 14

9 am - 12 pm PT | 10 am - 1 pm MT | 11 am - 2 pm CT | 12 pm - 3 pm ET

Stephen Ehrmann, independent scholar

**Stylus Publishing is willing to offer a 20% discount on Stephen Ehrmann's new book, Pursuing Quality, Access, and Affordability: A Field Guide to Improving Higher Education, to all conference participants. See flier for details.**

Workshop Description:

What's been standing in the way of efforts at your institution to transform STEM education? We've learned a lot about such barriers from case histories of six institutions, each covering 10-20 years of their development. Each of the six (Georgia State, Governors State, Guttman Community College, Southern New Hampshire University's College for America programs, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Central Oklahoma) has had some success in improving institutional outcomes related to the quality of learning, equitable access, and affordability.

Their experience suggests that it's essential for STEM reform to be conceived in terms of large educational and organizational changes at the institution. For STEM reformers to go it alone makes it unlikely that enough support can be garnered for needed organizational changes, e.g., of rewards and role definitions; building confidence in cross-silo collaboration; in how the institution markets itself to potential new students, staff and faculty; etc. Transforming teaching and learning must co-evolve with a wide range of mutually supportive organizational changes, which is one reason why real gains in the quality of learning, equitable access, and affordability take 10-20 years to develop . At this workshop, we'll discuss, step by step, how your institution could develop the capacity to make such 3fold gains in its STEM and other programs.

Objectives: 

  • Help participants think critically about a broader context of institutional change in which successful STEM transformation can develop.
  • Help participants understand their institutions' current capacity to support transformation of STEM learning.
  • Help participants consider what their institutions can do now to strengthen that capacity.

Required Reading:

Before the workshop, please read the article describing this research and how to apply it. As you read, consider whether and how these findings and recommendations could be applied to your own situation. The more participants familiarize themselves with the framework in advance, the more time we can devote discussing how to apply it.

Workshop Materials: