NSF Award
1723385
The lack of systemic change in STEM education points to an important problem with the approach that the STEM education community has pursued thus far. Change has been targeted at the course and curriculum levels, focusing on teaching and learning methods and proving their efficacy. While beneficial, these activities have not fostered the strategies - such as motivation, communication, collaboration, and persuasion - that are necessary if individuals wish to enact change on larger, more institutional levels. These change strategies are well documented in the literature of other disciplines, such as organizational psychology and behavior, but have not been brought into the conversation within STEM education in a rigorous, accessible way. The workshop Making Academic Change Happen (MACH) fills the need of academics for research-based skills development and assistance in creating a plan for change. Through targeted working sessions on specific topics (e.g. partnership development, generating buy-in, institutional context, and identity discovery), participants learn research-proven strategies for making large scale change happen on their home campus. The focus group for the 2017 MACH Workshop is emerging engineering educators. The primary experience of graduate training is to be introduced to disciplinary research and then be provided with a means to gain further competence. We have determined, however, that new engineering educators are tasked with developing new courses, curricula, and programs. These initiatives require additional skills or areas of expertise: advising, mentoring, curriculum development, imaginative vision, program assessment, etc. None of these skills are likely addressed in a typical engineering Ph.D. curriculum. For these reasons, we believe that new engineering educators who envision themselves as change agents should work to adopt the disposition and skills of a change agent. Attending the MACH Workshop will help these educators start on their path as engineering education innovators.<br/><br/>The purpose of this workshop is to assist emerging engineering educators in: 1) learning and practicing skills needed to lead change, and 2) preparing working documents around a variety of topics that are necessary to advance a change project. By fostering the development of these skills and mindsets in the very people who must lead change efforts, this workshop promotes meaningful change in STEM higher education. The change projects advanced by the workshop participants are expected to become model programs that can be mined for examples strategies and processes for others hoping to implement similar ideas. These projects reach beyond a single classroom, focusing more on the underlying processes, approaches, or philosophy of STEM education enacted on their campus. By working within the institution's context, the change agents trained during the MACH Workshop will positively impact the student experience of STEM. As part of this research, the emerging engineering educators will be interviewed about their change projects and provided with mentors and support for their change activities. Mentorship will continue to be offered after the workshop is over. The progress on their change projects will also be tracked as they implement the MACH change strategies they learned during the workshop.
