Building Excellence in Undergraduate STEM Education

American Association For The Advancement Of Science, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

Technical Description The project is supporting The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to organize and run Principal Investigator (PI) meetings in 2013 and in 2015 for the Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM (TUES) program (and its predecessor, the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Instruction (CCLI) program). The objective of the conferences is to provide opportunities for TUES/CCLI PIs to share methods and strategies for preparing a diverse undergraduate student population to enter the scientific workforce and to participate as citizens in a technological society. The overall outcome of these conferences is for TUES PIs to identify collaborators, strategies, and actions that they and others can use to strengthen the design, development, and implementation of promising project approaches to transform undergraduate STEM education. The conferences include plenary lectures, poster sessions, interactive workshop discussions on topics of interest to those leading TUES projects, and opportunities to network with other faculty and educational leaders engaged in improving undergraduate STEM education. Broader Significance Each conference includes more than 500 TUES/CCLI PIs and 50 other participants, including publishers and staff of professional societies, foundations, and business. All TUES/CCLI PIs selected to participate in the conferences must present a small group session or a poster. Other non-NSF participants are expected to disseminate information about strategies and concepts. To ensure diversity among the topics and participants, selection is taking into account discipline, type of project, type of institution, race/ethnicity, gender, disability, and geographic location. The on-site project evaluation is capturing actions that participants intend to take immediately after each conference. An online follow-up survey is capturing actions that participants are taking no later than three months after each conference. Products to be developed include conference programs with printed abstracts and glossy post-conference publications with case studies of exemplary TUES projects.