Developing a Leadership Community of Practice Toward a Healthy Educational Ecosystem

Nazar, C..; Thompson, L.; Bowen, C.; Menezes, G.

Student success in educational ecosystems is a primary goal of leadership efforts. Yet, power and privilege affect the racial, classist, and gendered implications of STEM education work in K-12 education as well as higher education. Interventions have been done at various levels, but despite the hard work of implementation, this has not resulted in dramatic improvements to STEM educational ecosystems or student engagement within them. Often, these implementations are done at the faculty/student level or institutional level but not at the departmental leadership level. The NSF-supported Eco-STEM Project proposes to establish a healthy educational ecosystem that supports all individuals (students, faculty, and staff) to thrive. Project activities are guided by ecosystem paradigm measures that support a culturally responsive learning/working environment; make teaching and learning rewarding and fulfilling; and emphasize community assets to enhance motivation, excellence, and success. For this work-in-progress paper, we describe the development of a leadership community of practice, comprised of department chairs of science and engineering departments, at [university name redacted], a large state-funded comprehensive majority minority master’s granting institution in the Southwest United States. In the year-long Leadership Community of Practice (L-CoP), the Fellows work on unpacking issues of power and privilege in their roles as STEM leaders and educators. During the Fall semester of 2022, the Fellows participated in four sessions. They engaged in readings, videos, active-learning activities, and critically reflective dialogues to facilitate discussion and reflection on identity, agency, the culture of power in STEM, and interventions and change in higher education. The L-CoP starts with Fellows reflecting on their social and professional identities and how their identities influence their teaching and leadership philosophies. Then Fellows are introduced to the framework of the culture of power in science--where they explore the social, cultural, and political impacts of preparing for a STEM college education. Finally, they explore theories and models of change for STEM higher education spaces. Through this curriculum, we aim to examine mental models to deconstruct notions that uphold the culture of power in science by instead building counternarratives with faculty and students in their departments. Through dialogues within the L-CoP, leaders discuss classroom/program climate, structure, and vibrancy to better support healthy educational ecosystems, as well as their participation in these systems. We are currently in the middle of our first implementation of the L-CoP. The first cohort consists of six L-CoP Fellows with highly diverse positionalities; there is racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, and all Fellows are full professors in the tenure line and chairs of their respective departments. We present details of the L-CoP, including the formation of the Fellow cohort, training of the facilitators, structure of the sessions, and initial results of our mid-program survey. The survey results provide insights into potential improvements to our tools and program. We also share some of the Fellows’ and facilitators’ reflections demonstrating a shift toward an ecosystem mindset. We prefer to present this work as a poster at the 2023 ASEE Annual Conference.

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