Â鶹ӰԺ

Many agencies call for "systemic" and "institutional" change in STEM higher education to address hard problems that lead to inequitable outcomes, such as ineffective teaching, disengaged learning, and exclusionary environments. At root these challenges are embedded in complex systems of multiple, intertwined subsystems; these systems are often based in tradition and replete with patterns of institutional culture that may be neither explicit nor purposely designed. Thus solving these challenges will require more than a single intervention by a single stakeholder; a systemic approach is required. Systemic approaches will combine interventions strategically and deploy multiple levers of change at multiple levels of the institution. Given their complexity, such change projects will be more likely to succeed if their leaders can draw upon robust research as they design and implement their projects, considering not only what to do to address the problem they want to solve, but how they will do so: how they will promote, connect, and sustain the interventions they have designed; engage leaders and stakeholders; and respond to resistance or setbacks.

Projects supported by NSF's ADVANCE Institutional Transformation (IT) program have developed multi-level, multi-lever portfolios of interventions to address the multi-faceted, multi-causal sources of gender inequity on STEM faculties. In prior research, our team has specifically studied interventions to increase gender equity, and in doing so identified a set of processes that seem to function as essential scaffolding for the change interventions. We are now investigating these scaffolding processes—termed "scaffolding" because they support and link particular interventions to enhance their synergistic effects, and build and leverage campus buy-in to deepen institutional impact. The research team seeks

1. To identify, analyze and explain these scaffolding processes as seen in ADVANCE change projects
2. To deepen and test our understanding of these processes with experienced change leaders of equity-directed change projects both within and beyond ADVANCE, thereby exploring the transferability of this new knowledge
3. To offer useful findings and strategies to scholars and change agents who study and carry out work on faculty-based institutional change to improve STEM education and broaden participation. 

We are seeking copies of documents that change teams have already prepared about your work: your proposal and annual reports to NSF, research papers or evaluation reports, posters or presentation slides, and so on.  These documents serve two purposes: First, our research team will use these historical records to develop background knowledge about your team’s work, so that we can focus our time together in an interview or SEED on the working processes relevant to your change project. The better we understand the design and outcomes of your initiatives in advance, the more rewarding the conversation, because we can ask targeted questions and generate shared insights. Second, our team will use your documents as additional research data sources that capture rich detail from different time points in the project. In all cases, we will keep these records confidential within our research team, recognizing that they represent original intellectual work and may include sensitive information about individuals. Our confidentiality agreement provides further details about the care we will take with this information, and we will provide a signed copy with receipt of your documents.

We use individual interviews to capture key perspectives about a particular project from people who have deep experience with the work, perhaps as a principal investigator, project director, lead evaluator, or in another role central to the project or the institution. Drawing on what we've learned already from documents, our interview questions will probe perceptions and experiences with the project—not just to document its design and progress, but to understand what is important to the speaker and why. Through reflection and hindsight, we'll identify important lessons learned or offer advice to colleagues just getting underway: sometimes interviewees identify insights they didn't know they had!  Interviews last about an hour, depending on what speakers have to say. We treat interviews as confidential, kept within the research team, and will ask each person to provide informed consent (copy of consent form for review).

What is involved in a SEED?

The SEED discussion will explore organizational change processes with other people who can offer diverse perspectives on your project and its internal workings. We want to hear about working processes that your team has found important in your particular context and why.  We will ask you to be reflective and analytical, and to speak to what has not worked, as well as what has. We do not ask or expect your team to reach consensus; we value differences in perspective and honor them as revealing insight. 

SEEDs will take place on Zoom at a mutually agreeable date/s and time/s. Before the first session, we’ll send everyone the agenda and discussion questions and ask you to reflect in advance, so that you have some thoughts ready to share. A collaborative workspace will support conversation and offer opportunities to think and respond to ideas individually. Past participants have found the SEED a very interesting opportunity to reflect on their own work, to place it in context of the national ADVANCE movement, and to contribute to research that will help others drive institutional change.

Who should participate?

We find that SEEDs work best when the group as a whole represents a variety of perspectives.

For a Campus SEED, groups will include people from a single institutional change project who are familiar with what you have accomplished and the challenges you have faced. Ideally, Campus SEEDs will include members from a project's leadership, research, and evaluation teams; internal or external advisory board members; a project coordinator familiar with the on-the-ground work; and so on. Because campus leaders know the roles and individuals better than we do, we seek your suggestions of people to gather as participants, and your advice as to how best to reach them.

For a Topical SEED, groups will include people with diverse roles and perspectives on a wider range of change projects: campus change agents, researchers, evaluators, administrators, and people who have worked with campus projects in a variety of roles. We will ask you to read each others' bios in advance of the SEED, and we will structure the conversation so that you get to know a bit about each other and learn from each other.

In every case, we will treat these conversations as confidential, kept within the research team and group participants, and will ask everyone to provide informed consent (copy of consent form for review).

• The includes analyses of key strategies used by ADVANCE Institutional Transformation (IT) projects and how strategies were combined by different IT projects. Video interviews with institutional leaders describe institutional innovations and explore cross-cutting challenges for change leaders.
• Laursen & Austin's 2020 book, Building Gender Equity in the Academy: Institutional Strategies for Change, is a handbook and how-to guide for leaders. The book offers guidance on research-based strategies to enhance gender equity on STEM faculties and how to analyze the organizational context to make choices about what strategies may best fit your institution.
• Laursen & De Welde's 2019 article, , examines how the National Science Foundation's call for proposals to the ADVANCE program has evolved over time. Some of the organizational change processes that we will study in the current project are related to expectations that emerge from earlier projects' experiences and challenges.
• De Welde's 2015 book (with Andi Stepnick), , examines the challenges women face in the academy and suggest tools for advancing gender equality and equity in higher education.

• Sandra Laursen, Â鶹ӰԺ 

Sandra is senior research associate and co-director of , where she leads research and evaluation studies focusing on education and career paths in science and mathematics. Her studies of organizational change in higher education have addressed STEM faculty use of active learning practices and gender equity on STEM faculties. Laursen has published widely on inquiry- and research-based learning in math and science, professional development of STEM instructors, graduate education, career development, and science outreach. She studied chemistry and French at Grinnell College and the University of California Berkeley. She is a singer, a birder, and a keen traveler.

• Ann E. Austin, Michigan State University

Ann is University Distinguished Professor in the Michigan State University College of Education and Interim Associate Provost and Vice President for MSU's Office for Faculty and Academic Staff Affairs. Austin's research concerns faculty careers and professional development, organizational change in higher education, teaching and learning in higher education, doctoral education, reform in STEM education, the academic workplace, equity and inclusion in academe and higher education in the international context. She currently co-chairs the National Academies of Sciences Roundtable on Systemic Reform in Undergraduate STEM Education. She was a founding co-PI and leader of the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL), funded by the National Science Foundation, and principal investigator (with Laursen) of an NSF-funded ADVANCE PAID grant to study organizational change strategies that support the success of women scholars in STEM fields. Current work focuses on how networks of organizations are contributing to reform in STEM education, and improvements in teaching evaluation in higher education.

• Kristine De Welde, College of Charleston

Kris is Director and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Professor of Sociology at the College of Charleston (SC). She earned her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Colorado, Â鶹ӰԺ. She specializes in the study of intersectional inequalities in higher education and organizational change for academic justice as well as liberation-focused pedagogies. Her book with Andi Stepnick (Belmont University), Disrupting the Culture of Silence: Confronting Gender Inequality and Making Change in Higher Education, received a 2015 Choice award for Outstanding Academic Title. De Welde has delivered numerous conference keynote addresses, interactive workshops and formal lectures at campuses across the country on concerns about equity and inclusion, social justice leadership, and gender. She was awarded the 2016-2017 Sociologists for Women in Society Feminist Activism Award for her sustained commitments to social justice within and beyond the academy.

• Diana Roque, Â鶹ӰԺ

Diana has an undergraduate degree in biology and masters in biology teaching, with experience as a K-12 classroom teacher and as an informal science educator in the US and her native Brazil.  She is interested in inquiry-based learning, development of students’ critical thinking and research skills, and integrated STEM and STEAM curricula.  She carried out qualitative research for her master’s thesis study of citizen science and science literacy of elementary school students.  She works with E&ER on two studies of organizational change processes in STEM higher education. 

Our advisors include people experienced with leadership, research and evaluation of ADVANCE and other change projects in higher education.

• , University of Maryland College Park - external evaluator
• , Lafayette College
• , Carleton College
• , Caltech
• , University of Nebraska, Lincoln
• , California State University system (retired)
• , Grinnell College