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1. Special session: STEM faculty development research agenda

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2017.8190561  

   Stefl, Shannon K.; Martin, Julie P.; Lee, Cindy M.; High, Karen A.; Linder, Sandra M. (October 2017, Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   Abstract—Expectations for faculty members are high: STEM faculty are expected to establish a sustainable research trajectory, a teaching practice, and a service/leadership role all while pursuing tenure and promotion success. Although many colleges and universities have established STEM faculty development programs, a deficiency in holistic professional support remains, specifically in the integration and alignment of these disparate professional activities with individual and institutional goals. This session will involve participants to continue the work undertaken to bring together multiple stakeholders in academia, government, and industry to establish a research agenda for STEM faculty development. The audience includes those interested in furthering this research agenda. Keywords—STEM, faculty development, research agenda 

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2. Designing Inclusive Teaching Workshops with Non-Tenure-Track Faculty in Mind

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--47144  

   Mejia, Kenya; Bowen, Corin; Thompson, Lizabeth; Feng, Yilin; Menezes, Gustavo (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   The research team at [anonymized for review], is implementing an ongoing NSF-funded research project aiming to change the paradigm of teaching and learning in STEM and its underlying mental models from a factory-like model to a more ecosystem-like model. One aspect of the project is developing Communities of Practice for faculty that help foster this shift in mindset. This paper specifically discusses a more workshop-like delivery of the existing [anonymized for review] Faculty Fellows’ Community of Practice, condensed into two days, as opposed to throughout a full academic year. This workshop model was developed for lecturers, or non-tenure track (NTT) faculty, who are given less resources and opportunities for professional development and have less flexibility in their schedules. Some lecturers work part-time on campus and may have full-time employment elsewhere. Lecturers responded enthusiastically and actively contributed to conversations about educational models in these sessions. They showed interest in more professional development opportunities like [anonymized for review], which they are often not afforded in their roles as lecturers. Lecturers also reiterated the lack of opportunities for community-building such as what they felt was provided by this workshop series. The research team’s Lecturers’ Community of Practice was overwhelmingly well-received by lecturers, despite its condensed nature. The focus of this paper is on the intentional decisions made by the research and facilitation team to provide professional development experience catered to non-tenure track faculty, some who are part-time instructors . In this paper, we also highlight what aspects of the workshop resonated with lecturers, particularly those designed with lecturers in mind, and those unexpectedly helpful for the participants. This paper adds to the conversation on providing more workshops on inclusive teaching for NTT Faculty, who play a critical role in making our programs successful. We include feedback from participants and implications for practice. 

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3. Impact of Peer-Assisted Learning and Leadership Development on Undergraduate Students

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--41968  

   Fogarty, Julie; Altman, Robin; Lundmark, Jennifer (August 2022, ASEE Conferences)

   With college advisory boards and potential employers consistently voicing their desire for engineers and scientists who can communicate well, work effectively in teams, and independently problem-solve, the Colleges of Engineering & Computer Science (ECS) and Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NSM) at Sacramento State University, a large, public, primarily undergraduate institution, have deployed two programs to explicitly address these skills for undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students. The goals of the NSF-funded Achieving STEM Persistence through Peer-Assisted Learning and Leadership Development (ASPIRE) project are to increase retention and decrease time to graduation for STEM students, as well as increase retention of women and underrepresented minorities (URM) in the STEM workforce by implementing evidence-based practices to promote student success during two critical transitions: 1) from lower-division to upper-division coursework in engineering; and 2) from upper-division coursework to an entry-level STEM career. ASPIRE aims to achieve these goals by: 1) adapting and implementing the NSM Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) program in gateway engineering courses; and 2) developing the Hornet Leadership Program which includes scaffolded opportunities for students to explore their leadership capacity and develop leadership skills. The main research questions for this study include: (1) Will the ECS PAL model and Hornet Leadership Program result in increased persistence and workforce readiness in STEM majors at a large, diverse university? (2) What attitude changes will this project have on students and faculty and the relationships between them? The first question is addressed through pre- and post-implementation student surveys and student course/GPA data. The second question is addressed through faculty surveys, faculty focus groups/interviews, and pre- and post-data from a faculty professional development workshop. In general, preliminary results from this study indicate the new ECS PAL program successfully attracts URM students and thus has the potential to support their persistence and STEM workforce readiness. Additionally, undergraduate students across both Colleges who participated in the inaugural Hornet Leadership Program gained non-technical skills and experiences directly linked to competitiveness and preparation for workforce entry and graduate programs. Finally, faculty surveys and the faculty professional development workshop indicate that faculty value student leadership development, but identify barriers to accomplishing this work. 

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4. A workshop for and by disciplinary STEM faculty: Learn how to design high-quality qualitative educational research!

   Morelock, John R.; Jarvie-Eggart, Michelle; Chenette, Heather; Hooshangi, Sara; Chesnutt, Betsy; Wilson, Sarah; Bolhari, Azadeh; Dodson, Kirsten; Pavlova, Iglika; Reck, Rebecca (December 2023, Proceedings Frontiers in Education Conference)

   The purpose of this workshop is to introduce instructional and disciplinary tenure-track STEM faculty to high-quality qualitative research design in order to explore their intellectual curiosity around STEM education. We will do so using the ProQual approach, a methodologically unencumbered and widely accessible way of thinking about qualitative research design that was deployed and refined over the last three years as part of the NSF-funded ProQual Institute for Research Methods. This workshop will be conducted by STEM faculty who have graduated from the ProQual Institute, who are culturally sensitive to the challenges faced by disciplinary STEM faculty. Leveraging a propagation model of effecting academic change, these workshop leaders will also serve as a community of practice to help workshop participants move their educational research ideas forward during and after the workshop. 

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5. Identifying and Disseminating Transformative Professional Development of STEM Undergraduates Who Perform Outreach: Progress in Year 1

   Alley, M.; Garner, J. K. (June 2019, ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   To teach STEM content to K-12 students and to recruit talented and diverse K-12 students into STEM, many outreach programs at universities in the United States rely on STEM undergraduates. While the design of such outreach typically focuses on the K-12 students who are taught or recruited, an important but often overlooked consideration is the effect of the outreach on the professional development of the STEM undergraduates themselves. This proposed EAGER project seeks to determine which outreach programs in the United States provided the most transformative professional development of the participating STEM undergraduates. This project then seeks to capture the essence what practices in those programs provided transformative professional development. Next, the project seeks to disseminate these practices to a network of institutions doing outreach. Supporting this project is the NSF EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) program. In this first year of the project, we performed a systematic review of literature and university websites with follow-up survey data to identify outreach programs that may be transformative for STEM undergraduates. This review yielded a matrix of about 100 college-based outreach programs. We then invited these programs to attend one of the following workshops: a March workshop held at Tufts University in Boston or an April workshop held at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Nine institutions sent representatives to the Boston workshop, and five institutions sent representatives to the Lincoln workshop. In addition, we held conference calls to gather information from an additional six institutions. The purpose of the workshops and conference calls was two-fold: (1) determine best practices for outreach that used STEM undergraduates, and (2) determine what in those programs provided the most transformative development of the participating STEM undergraduates. This paper presents preliminary results from these workshops and conference calls. 

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