From SAGE 2YC to C-ChanGe: Building on a Successful PD Model for Disciplinary Change

Over nearly a decade of work, the Supporting and Advancing Geoscience Education at Two-Year Colleges (SAGE 2YC) project developed a robust model for helping two-year college geoscience faculty implement high-impact, evidence-based instructional and co-curricular practices at their own institutions that will lead to improved STEM learning, broadened participation, and a more robust STEM workforce. The cohort-based model provided multi-year professional development at a local level coupled with scaffolding at the national scale to develop a corps of faculty capable of providing leadership in their institutions, regional networks, and the national geoscience education community.

The Cultural Change in Geoscience (C-ChanGe) project built on this work to effect positive change in the culture of geosciences departments at four-year institutions as a lever to change the discipline as a whole. Employing both in-person and virtual meetings as well as asynchronous engagement, C-ChanGe provided a cohort of eight teams faculty participants with access to impactful practices and perspectives developed in the wide array of change efforts underway across the STEM disciplines. These teams of change agents identified issues of departmental culture particular to their context, investigated practices to address those challenges, and reflected on their implementation through ongoing engagement in a community of practice. Coupled with explicit leadership training, this process increased their capacity to lead local departmental change from a faculty position. Materials from this professional development process have been made available on the C-ChanGe website so that change agents at other institutions can engage in this learning and work independently.