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Participants of the Institute for Scientist and Engineer Educators’ (ISEE) Professional Development Program (PDP) work in Design Teams to create inquiry activities that foster student learning of relevant STEM content and practices. These teams implement the inquiry activities in one or more teaching venues (i.e., a context in which Design Team members act as instructors or facilitators with actual learners or students). One such venue is the Akamai Internship Program’s PREP Course. Concurrent with running the PDP, ISEE supported the development of frameworks to help Akamai interns understand the projects they undertake during their internship. Two frameworks were developed: one focused on scientific explanations and the other on engineering solutions. This paper describes how PDP inquiry activities and the ISEE Frameworks come together in a mutually supportive manner during the Akamai PREP Course. This synergy becomes apparent as we examine the sequential placement of PREP sessions whereby the frameworks both push interns to make sense of their experiences with such activities (e.g., revisiting the explanation framework after a science-oriented inquiry) and prepare interns for effective engagement in upcoming inquiry activities (e.g., using the solution framework before an engineering-oriented inquiry). Recommendations include using a similar pairing of inquiry activities and frameworks in other teaching venues. 

In many organizations (e.g., higher education, non-profits, small companies), individuals are called upon to lead small groups of people to complete one or more tasks both in formal roles and in informal settings. For example, department heads, committee chairs, project leads, and program managers are all roles that require an individual to utilize leadership skills to lead their team to the successful completion of the tasks at hand. However, in many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields and their associated jobs, training and support in leadership development are often lacking. To meet this need, the Institute for Scientist and Engineer Educators (ISEE) at the University of California - Santa Cruz (UCSC) made supporting and mentoring leadership development a key component of the Professional Development Program (PDP) for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in STEM, which ran for over 20 years. Building off of the ISEE leadership development model (ISEE 2020), this workshop is designed to give professionals an opportunity to learn about and practice important leadership skills that can be used in their organizations. In this workshop, participants learn to apply three elements of effective leadership that are useful in practice and inclusive of multiple perspectives on leadership. Participants apply actionable leadership practices to their own challenges at work and develop the language to discuss their own leadership skills. Workshop duration: 15 minutes individual reading, 2 hours in-person workshop, 15 minutes follow up. 

ISEE Professional Development Program Teaching Teams, Akamai interns, and Akamai staff all participate in a multi-day Preparation for Research Experiences and Projects (PREP) course at the start of the annual Akamai Internship Program. One of the goals for the PREP course is to establish an inclusive, collaborative community amongst the varied participants. Integrated with the inquiry activities taught by Teaching Teams are several Akamai-designed and facilitated activities whose purpose is to build community as well as an understanding of and sensitivity towards an inclusive work environment. These activities include an opening icebreaker, a career pathways discussion, workplace integration role-plays, a workplace inclusion discussion, and a closing celebration dinner. This paper highlights specific connections between the Institute for Scientist and Engineer Educators’ Equity & Inclusion strand and the collaborative activities that engage Teaching Teams, interns, and staff during the Akamai PREP course. 

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It seems intuitive that effective learning experiences in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) should be inclusive and should mirror authentic STEM as practiced by professionals. However, it is less intuitive what an authentic, inclusive STEM learning experience (AISLE) should look like or include. Over the course of 20 years, the Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators (ISEE) has grappled with this question, developing and refining a framework of six key elements of authentic and inclusive STEM learning experiences. Here, we present this framework, which grew from an exploration of what “scientific inquiry” means in the context of teaching and learning, and expanded to include practices and norms that are valued in engineering fields. ISEE’s framework is the cornerstone of its Professional Development Program (PDP), which trained early-career science and engineering professionals to teach STEM effectively, primarily at the college level, from 2001-2020. In addition to presenting the six elements of this framework, we describe how PDP participants implemented the elements, and we provide recommendations for putting the elements into practice through the design, teaching and assessment of STEM learning experiences. 

In teaching for experiential learning, we measure our success not by how well we presented the material or designed an activity but by how well our students learned. Facilitation, the moment-to-moment twists and turns of live interactions between educators and learners, is a critical tool for student learning. Over the 20 years of the Professional Development Program (PDP), we have refined our articulation of the desired learning outcomes and have developed a set of strategies and “moves” that contribute to attaining those outcomes. Here, we examine these as well as describe materials and training developed in the PDP to build the skills of novice facilitators. 

The Professional Development Program (PDP) was a highly impactful and innovative program that was run by the Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators for twenty years, from 2001–2020. The program trained early-career scientists and engineers to teach effectively and inclusively, while also developing participants’ skills in leadership, collaboration, and teamwork. In this paper, we summarize important aspects of the PDP and some of the program’s major outcomes, describe legacies of the program, and share recommendations based on two decades of experience. A large section of this paper details aspects of the PDP that we consider essential to the program but that might not be apparent from other documentation of the program. Recommendations for others interested in professional development of STEM graduate students and postdoctoral scholars are: 1) invest in establishing program culture; 2) prepare participants pursuing all STEM career paths for inclusive teaching; 3) focus on teaching and learning authentic STEM practices of participants’ fields; 4) provide authentic and challenging contexts for practicing professional skills; 5) model all aspects of what participants are expected to do; and 6) provide opportunities for growth and becoming a collaborator within the community. 

We present the status and plans for the Keck All sky Precision Adaptive optics (KAPA) program. KAPA includes (1) an upgrade to the Keck I laser guide star adaptive optics (AO) facility to improve image quality and sky coverage, (2) the inclusion of AO telemetry-based point spread function estimates with all science exposures, (3) four key science programs, and (4) an educational component focused on broadening the participation of women and underrepresented groups in instrumentation. For this conference we focus on the KAPA upgrades since the 2020 SPIE proceedings1 including implementation of a laser asterism generator, wavefront sensor, real-time controller, asterism and turbulence simulators, the laser tomography system itself along with new operations software and science tools, and modifications to an existing near-infrared tip-tilt sensor to support multiple natural guide star and focus measurements. We will also report on the results of daytime and on-sky calibrations and testing. 

We present the status and plans for the Keck All sky Precision Adaptive optics (KAPA) program. KAPA includes four key science programs, an upgrade to the Keck I laser guide star (LGS) adaptive optics (AO) facility to improve image quality and sky coverage, AO telemetry based point spread function (PSF) estimates for all science exposures, and an educational component focused on broadening the participation of women and underrepresented groups in instrumentation. For the purpose of this conference we will focus on the AO facility upgrade which includes implementation of a new laser, wavefront sensor and real-time controller to support laser tomography, the laser tomography system itself, and modifications to an existing near-infrared tip-tilt sensor to support multiple natural guide star (NGS) and focus measurements.