Institutionalization and System-wide Scaling of an Experiential Learning Program

In 2016, Washington State University, a research-intensive university in rural eastern Washington, funded the Transformational Change Initiative (TCI) to create a more student-centered cultural climate. The TCI utilizes a multi-programmatic approach to increase students' academic resilience through repeated exposure to pro-social cultural messaging. Theoretical and empirical work from prevention sciences suggests that academic resilience is promoted by encouraging students to embrace a growth mindset, fostering a sense of belonging, and teaching students to apply value-based decision making. Adoption of these resilience-building strategies has been shown to be particularly impactful for those historically excluded in post-secondary education including underrepresented minorities, first-generation college students, and women in STEM disciplines.

This poster will present a case study of the institutionalization and system-wide scale up of one of the TCI programs; the LAUNCH program.

The LAUNCH program seeks to further embed students into the WSU community by providing pathways to experiential learning opportunities (e.g., undergraduate research, and service learning) to promote their academic resilience. The LAUNCH program exposes students early in their academic careers to experiential activities so that they develop their sense of belonging by utilizing values exploration strategies to encourage them to embrace new pro-social learning perspectives and behaviors. This is accomplished via partnerships with large enrollment courses and peer-mentor facilitated workshops where students identify experiential learning opportunities based on their goals, personal values, and strengths.

In this poster, we will discuss the key stakeholders, institutional supports, and data used to garner institutional support and scale to the other, more diverse, WSU campuses. Additionally, we will cover the current process for facilitating intra- and inter-institutional collaboration for program expansion including important considerations on how to adapt initiatives for differing stakeholders and more diverse student populations (e.g., increased representation of first-generation, >30% Hispanic).