Hang together or Hang Separately? Organizing for the Future of STEM Reform

An alphabet soup of faculty communities of practice in undergraduate STEM have emerged since the 1980's—PKAL, POGIL, SENCER, BioQUEST, PULSE, InTeGrate, IONIc, NIST to name a few. While approaches varied, these STEM improvement initiatives all were evidence-based, and fully committed to broadening participation of underrepresented students. Collectively and over decades, they have impacted the practice of many thousands of STEM educators and have contributed greatly to the fund of knowledge on teaching and learning. Their successes as "levers of change" and "communities of transformation" are well documented in NSF funded research.

Launched as funded initiatives in colleges and universities, which served as hosts, today they struggle to serve their sizable constituencies as independent non-profits through fee-based services, memberships, modest grants, and a great deal of volunteer labor. The current freeze on federal grants and devastating cuts to NSF will inevitably further strain, if not crush, these STEM reform communities. Their disappearance would squander many millions invested by public and private funders as well as the tireless decades-long efforts of reformers committed to systemic change. Encouragingly, precarity has fueled collaboration between and among these groups, generating joint programs, sharing of platforms and resources, reciprocal dissemination, and coalition building—producing an unprecedented level of alignment around core goals and mission. In this session three long-serving leaders in STEM reform will reflect on how the current moment presents a unique and urgent opportunity to organize the diverse segments of the STEM improvement ecosystem in a single aligned and sustainable force for change.