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Our evidence-based practice paper will present a Teaching Excellence Network (TEN) implemented at a large, multi-campus, North-Eastern US, R1 institution. TEN was funded by a 5-year NSF IUSE grant (institutional and community transformation track) that was part of a multidisciplinary collaboration of science and engineering faculty and Learning Centers staff. We discuss our practices, the reasons behind them, and impacts on participating faculty, emphasizing building connections between the institution’s offices, departments, and schools. TEN addressed perceptions of fragmentated and siloed faculty development initiatives at our institution. Faculty development efforts are distributed across departments, including an office for teaching with technology, one for assessment and evaluation, two school-based offices, a center for faculty research excellence, and an office for DEIB efforts. While each contributes significantly to faculty development, the siloes and disconnected communication channels lead to a perception of scarcity when it comes to support around teaching. In addition, most units focus on specific areas of development and not the kind of holistic teaching support we implemented. Recently, engineering departments have hired full-time teaching-focused faculty to improve teaching practice and education quality. While some science and math departments have many teaching-focused faculty, our engineering departments often have only a few faculty in these positions. We designed our BDI to bring siloed faculty together and create easier access to the many and varied programs across campus. TEN, and our study, are grounded in questions about how institutional structures impact faculty agency and motivation. Our work is guided by three theories: Structuration, Agency, and Expectancy-Value. These theories conceptualize human motivation as being connected to instructors’ expectations of success in an endeavour (e.g., transforming aspects of their course) and the perceived value of that endeavour, while allowing us to examine the interdependence of human decision-making and institutional structures. We planned TEN around maximizing value for faculty, while generating structures that supported faculty becoming involved in our programs and focusing efforts on teaching development. TEN has two major components: summer institutes are focused on pedagogical content delivery, and the production of usable materials and course design plans; semester support groups focus on the production or implementation of specific smaller projects, or the in-depth discussion of particular research-based ideas to provide faculty continuing support and a sense of connectedness with peers. Our analysis will start from a thematic analysis of interviews with faculty, in the style of Braun and Clark, to develop a sense of our data and the impacts that this program has had on participants. We will be using our theoretical lens to look for themes around how the structures of TEN have impacted faculty. Through the iterative process of thematic analysis, other themes may also emerge for investigation, which will enrich our understanding of participants’ experiences. Presentation of these themes, alongside illustrative cases of STEM faculty, will demonstrate the impacts of TEN on participants, provide context for engaging roundtable discussions of what participants are taking away from the programs, and present implications for faculty development initiatives. 

Beginning in 2016 and with funding from the National Science Foundation, the Rural and Diverse Student Scholars Program at George Mason University supported two cohorts of diverse undergraduate students from rural Virginia in their pursuit of a STEM degree. A holistic program design and individual components aimed to combine to support student success. In a qualitative study with journal prompts, focus groups and interviews, the program was assessed, and insights were gleaned regarding the participant population. Results reveal the importance of community and mentoring in supporting student persistence and success. Participants described being rural as part of their identity and many maintained significant relationships with home and family, even after matriculation. Conclusions from this study are consistent with scholarly precedent and have implications for colleges and universities serving similar populations. 

Academic peer leadership positions provide opportunities for undergraduate students to develop content knowledge, Twenty- first Century Skills, and their beliefs about teaching and learning. To explore peer leaders’ (PLs’) epistemological development, the Epistemological Beliefs about Physical Sciences (EBAPS) survey was administered to 135 PLs three times a year, over a three-year period. This instrument was demonstrated to be valid and reliable for use with STEM PLs. Although the majority of positive shifts within instrument constructors occurred during the fall semester, responses did not regress by the end of the spring semester, demonstrating a retention of the new or altered beliefs over time. Implications for the design of PL development programs are discussed. 

The authors introduce the Preparation in STEM Leadership Program at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. This NSF-Funded program and research study creates a centralized training program for peer leaders that includes a battery of assessments to evaluate peer leaders' content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, communication skills, and leadership practices over time. This article introduces readers to the program and its theoretical background, explains some lessons learned regarding the program design and implementation, and briefly describes preliminary findings on a broad-scale from peer leaders' assessments intended to measure skills and content development.