skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: Departmental action teams: Empowering students as change agents in academic departments
Supporting and sustaining positive educational change is an area of increasing focus in higher education and remains a persistent challenge. Using student partnerships is one promising way to help promote these much-needed changes. This case study focuses on Departmental Action Teams (DATs), which are groups of faculty, students, and staff working together in the same department to make sustainable improvements to undergraduate education. Here we focus on DATs from four different departments, across two research-intensive universities in the USA, to draw attention to the important roles that students play as change agents in these groups. We also reflect upon the inherent challenges in building partnerships that incorporate meaningful power sharing to effect educational change  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1626565
PAR ID:
10181416
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
International Journal for Students as Partners
Volume:
4
Issue:
1
ISSN:
2560-7367
Page Range / eLocation ID:
128 to 137
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. (, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)
    The objective of the Research on Organizational Partnerships in Education and STEM (ROPES) Hub is to advance understanding of organizational partnerships that support academic pathways for domestic low-income engineering students. Partnerships across the education system are essential for improving STEM; achieving the systematic, structural, or sustainable change desired by programs such as NSF’s Scholarships for STEM Students (S-STEM) program is seldom achieved by individual isolated units and often requires partnerships across silos within an academic institution (i.e., intra-institution partnerships) and across institutions (i.e., inter-institution partnerships). However, how such partnerships are built, designed, and sustained remains a great challenge facing the field. This Hub, led by a collaborative team from Virginia Tech, Weber State University, Northern Virginia Community College, and the University of Cincinnati, is working to organize groups to conduct research focused on supporting low-income undergraduate engineering, computer science, and computing students in ways that are congruent with the institutional context and resources while going beyond the direct impact on S-STEM Scholars to impact departments and institutions involved. We are zooming in on the institutional infrastructure and collaborative work between researchers, administrators and practitioners, and policymakers. The overarching research question guiding the hub is: How can intra- and inter-institutional partnerships be designed, built, and sustained to systematically support low-income engineering student success? Answering this question requires a research hub because understanding different models of organizational partnerships—and linking such research to student outcomes across a variety of institutional contexts—requires a focus across S-STEM programs that is only enabled by a research hub approach; it cannot happen in a single S-STEM program. An important contribution of this work will be to characterize aspects of problems in which collaboration and partnerships can be most helpful—supporting low-income engineering students aiming to earn a bachelor’s degree fits these conditions, representing the kind of complex system of interacting, interdependent stakeholders with differing expertise and with no systematic organization of stakeholders. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; (, American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference)
    This research paper investigates the process of forming strategic partnerships to enact organizational change. There has been increasing interest in forming strategic partnerships in higher education due to a variety of motivations, such as pooling of resources and improving the professional development process for students (Worrall, 2007). It is important to examine how strategic partnerships form because the process of formation sets the objectives and expectations of the relationship, which in turn impact the likelihood of success and sustainability of the relationship. Further, despite the growing interest in forming strategic partnerships, the majority of these partnerships fail (Eddy, 2010). This analysis of strategic partnerships emerges from our participatory action research with university change agents activated through the NSF REvolutionizing engineering and computer science Departments (RED) Program. Through an NSF-funded collaboration between [University 1] and [University 2], we work with the change-making teams to investigate the change process and provide just-in-time training and support. Utilizing qualitative data from focus group discussions and observations of monthly cross-team teleconference calls, we examine the importance of motivations, social capital, and organizational capital in the process of forming strategic partnerships. We find that change-making teams have utilized a variety of strategies to establish goals and governance within strategic partnerships. These strategies include establishing alignment among institutional goals, project goals, and partner organization goals. Further, the strategic partnerships that have been most successful have occurred when teams have intentionally built mutually beneficial relationships and invited their partner into the visioning process for their change projects. These results delineate practices for initiating strategic partnerships within higher education and encourage faculty to build mutually beneficial strategic partnerships. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Education Sciences)
    Engineering education has faced significant and deep-rooted challenges, including outdated curricula and pedagogical practices, limited access for underrepresented groups, and persistent diversity gaps, that collectively undermine its ability to equip future generations of engineers for a rapidly evolving world. The changes that are needed to reform engineering education are monumental and highlight not only the need for systemic transformation of educational structures but also a fundamental shift in the mindsets of those leading the change. Faculty, professional staff, and administrators must develop knowledge and skills that go beyond their disciplinary training to drive sustainable reform. This article presents a professional development curriculum that has, for over a decade, equipped academic change agents with the tools to implement lasting change. Drawing on experiences from teams supported by the National Science Foundation’s Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (NSF RED) program, the article highlights proven strategies that academic change agents can master and situates them within the broader literature on change in higher education. Specifically, we focus on how academic change agents can develop capacity for systems thinking, build their ability to communicate effectively with various community members, leverage strategic partnerships to increase impact, and cultivate a supportive community of practice with other change agents. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; (, Journal of college science teaching)
    Recent reports have highlighted the varied and complicated paths STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) students often take to graduation, which may include attending multiple institutions and increased time to degree. These issues can be addressed, in part, by better coherence between institutions of higher education, such as two-year colleges (TYCs) and four-year colleges and universities. This article presents a cross-case comparison of two faculty-driven partnerships between TYCs and four-year institutions. Outcomes include impacts on individual faculty and increased coherence across the partnering institutions, resulting in course and program transformation, evolution of faculty identity and roles, better coherence and alignment across institutions, and faculty participation in national dialogue surrounding educational transformation. These two partnerships developed and operated independently, but common features include a concrete programmatic focus; regular, equitable discussions between faculty from different institutions; participation of faculty from institutions with similar missions and values; and initial external funding. These cases illustrate how faculty-driven, non-hierarchical, and discipline-based partnerships can facilitate faculty growth, while increasing coherence between two- and four year institutions in an effort to better serve STEM students. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; (, Journal of college science teaching)
    Recent reports have highlighted the varied and complicated paths STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) students often take to graduation, which may include attending multiple institutions and increased time to degree. These issues can be addressed, in part, by better coherence between institutions of higher education, such as two-year colleges (TYCs) and four-year colleges and universities. This article presents a cross-case comparison of two faculty-driven partnerships between TYCs and four-year institutions. Outcomes include impacts on individual faculty and increased coherence across the partnering institutions, resulting in course and program transformation, evolution of faculty identity and roles, better coherence and alignment across institutions, and faculty participation in national dialogue surrounding educational transformation. These two partnerships developed and operated independently, but common features include a concrete programmatic focus; regular, equitable discussions between faculty from different institutions; participation of faculty from institutions with similar missions and values; and initial external funding. These cases illustrate how faculty-driven, nonhierarchical, and discipline-based partnerships can facilitate faculty growth, while increasing coherence between two- and four-year institutions in an effort to better serve STEM students. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email