Initiating and Scaling Institutional Change: The Transformational Change Initiative

The Transformational Change Initiative (TCI) was initiated in 2016 as a five-year project funded through an internal strategic reallocation of university resources to promote student connectedness and stimulate students' personal motivation to constructively handle challenges within and beyond the classroom. Research has shown that students are more likely to succeed when they feel emotionally connected, view difficulty or failure as a normal part of growth, have a sense of purpose, and develop the skills needed to take actions aligned with that purpose. Interventions to promote student connectedness are especially effective for STEM students who have experienced opportunity gaps, including historically marginalized populations, first-generation students, and women. The TCI was designed to create multiple, integrated touchpoints that introduce students to resilience-building strategies early in their career and enhance faculty capacity to transcend the didactic instruction model and connect with students when they need it most.

In this presentation we will describe the activities encompassed by the TCI and the data that were leveraged to secure the buy-in necessary for permanent institutional funding for sustaining and scaling the change initiative. We will share the initial goals and strategic plan for scaling our initiative within our multi-campus system, describe our progress in scaling our activities, and leverage a systems thinking perspective to reflect on our challenges to date. Importantly, we describe the potential barriers to and enticements for STEM faculty buy in to such initiatives. We anticipate that this presentation will foster discussion of key considerations in initiating and sustaining a multi-pronged approach to affecting change in undergraduate STEM education.