Coordinating a Teaching Excellence Network to Engage STEM Faculty in Teaching Reform

Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national interest by supporting STEM faculty members implementation of evidence-based teaching practices. Such practices have been shown to benefit all students and have a particularly strong impact on under-represented groups in STEM. However, the culture of academia often impedes faculty in adopting these practices and the pace of making the needed changes has been slow. This project seeks to facilitate faculty adoption of evidence-based teaching practices by approaching course transformation as an issue of institutional structure and faculty action. This project will operate from the premise that organizational and structural factors must be systematically addressed to increase faculty support for and efforts to improve undergraduate STEM education at research universities. This project will create a Teaching Excellence Network to provide professional development activities that approach the challenge of institutional change through multiple facets of faculty support. It employs an assets-based approach to target faculty motivation and initiative, and to catalyze lasting institutional and cultural change around teaching. This project aims to develop faculty agency to transform their courses by implementing evidence-based pedagogies. Project activities will include (1) formally coordinating existing institutional resources for teaching through the Teaching Excellence Network, (2) designing and implementing resources to decrease faculty barriers to course transformation, and (3) engaging institutional leadership in promoting and valuing teaching reform. This work will draw from theories of structure, agency, and motivation to produce knowledge about how faculty approach the reform process and will use current research on institutional barriers to educational reform to develop, assess, and disseminate an assets-based model of teaching professional development. This project is supported by the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources, which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.