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Faculty interactions are common and inevitable in academic institutions. Workplace interactions and relationships play a key role in helping faculty members perform their roles effectively. The social circle acts as a support network, where faculty members interact on a range of topics, including teaching and learning. Healthy faculty interactions and relationships serve as the cornerstone for systemic capacity building, empowering system actors to achieve shared objectives and adapt to changing needs when necessary (Bain, Walker, & Chan, 2011; Stoll, 2009). This presentation explores faculty interactions around teaching and learning, with an eye toward implications for how administration can support the development of robust faculty social networks. We conducted semi-structured interviews with five faculty members, asking about specific instances when they sought support from colleagues related to teaching and learning. The interview questions were based on the Five Capabilities Model of Capacity, which defines capacity through five components: (a) committing and engaging, (b) carrying out tasks, (c) relating and attracting support, (d) adapting and self-renewing, and (e) balancing diversity with coherence. (Baser et al., 2008). The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using qualitative coding and thematic analysis with in-vivo and axial coding methods. Codes were refined, merged, and grouped into broader themes and categories. Results revealed three takeaways for STEM education administrators: (1) Creating shared spaces for both research and teaching strengthens faculty social networks by allowing for more hallway conversations about teaching and learning. (2) Mixing faculty roles (i.e., instructional and research faculty sharing a space) ensures that hallway conversations are varied in their topics, allowing faculty to leverage their social networks for professional growth in multiple areas. (3) Creating intentional time and space for informal faculty get-togethers encourages organic peer mentoring and strengthening of relationships. 

This work-in-progress paper examines faculty interactions, the formation of relationships, and how teaching and learning discussions occur within academic settings. Relationships are important and vital in every sphere of social life. In the context of faculty members, relationships play a crucial part in developing individual and systemic capacity for engineering teaching and learning. This study aims to uncover how faculty members develop and leverage their relationships and communities. It also sheds light on the ways and situations in which faculty members interact with one another for diverse reasons and needs. This study is part of an overarching study aimed at assessing STEM education capacity through social network analysis and developing an instrument to inform capacity building efforts. The purpose of this study is to understand the kinds of relationships and communities that are fostered among the faculty members and to whom they reach out when they need assistance and support. They could reach out in relation to their course content, course policies, or any random interaction regarding teaching and learning. We structured the interview questions around the Five Capabilities Model of Capacity, which splits on the construct of capacity into five capabilities: capability to (1) commit and engage, (2) carry out tasks, (3) relate and attract support, (4) adapt and self-renew, and (5) balance diversity with coherence. We selected this model because it is one of the only existing models of capacity which breaks the construct down into observable components. We used the 5C framework to align our interview questions with each dimension of the model. In this phase of the study, we conducted five semi-structured interviews with different faculty members, with interviews ranging from 45 to 60 minutes. We selected participants based on their participation in community-based faculty development activities. We used MaxQDA software to perform qualitative coding and thematic analysis, using in-vivo and axial coding methods; and broad themes and categories were developed using the codes. We categorized codes based on the “who, what, and why” of the interactions. The codes were checked, verified, and discussed using a peer examination approach among the authors to ensure rigor in the study. While the study yielded many interesting insights, the findings show that the 5C model of capabilities was not well-suited as a data collection model. Faculty members did not reach out to a specific set of people for each of the mentioned capabilities. Rather, we found that interactions and relationships are based on several factors, such as outcomes of casual interactions, community engagements and events, and sometimes random interactions in the hallways. Conversations related to instructional capacity building often did not start with that intention but rather emerged from more casual conversations. The initial findings suggest that interactions and relationships can emerge from various settings and occasions within the context of teaching and learning. These results indicate that capacity building manifests in diverse situations and satisfies divergent needs. We would like to present this paper as a lightning talk. 

The paper overviews a new IUSE:EDU project to develop a social network analysis (SNA) instrument that will allow STEM education centers to assess the otherwise intangible concept of STEM education capacity. STEM education capacity refers to the ability and empowerment of STEM educators to adapt to changing needs and collectively achieve shared objectives of their organizations. STEM education capacity is an important property of any academic system in STEM disciplines. It characterizes the readiness of the system’s members, communities, and the organization as a whole to adapt educational practices effectively to changing circumstances. However, it is also a latent system property, meaning that STEM education capacity can only be observed when it is in action. Most commonly, academic units see capacity in action during times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. In such times of crisis, it is too late to intervene and develop capacity to more effectively deal with the crisis. We argue that STEM education capacity can be more proactively be observed in mundane interactions between peers. SNA is a promising tool to be able to capture and quantify these interactions, allowing STEM education leaders to anticipate capacity development opportunities to better prepare for times of crisis or change. The project is in its first phase of three, in which we use qualitative interviewing to identify the kinds of relationships and interactions that matter to STEM education capacity building. We interviewed fifteen engineering faculty and staff involved in the teaching and learning process in one university’s College of Engineering. We aimed to understand who they talked to about teaching and learning, how their relationships developed, and what kinds of conversation they have most often. These interviews helped us deduce how engineering educators grow, learn, change, and help others through their interactions with other educators. The results of this phase of research yielded important insights about the ways networks of educators grow and solidify in STEM higher education. They also revealed the kinds of interactions relevant to individual growth and systemic capacity building. The next project phase will develop a SNA instrument that can capture the kinds of interactions relevant to STEM education capacity building. The final project phase will validate the instrument via its deployment across the entire College of Engineering. At the end of the project, STEM education leaders will have a tool they can use to assess, study, and grow STEM education capacity in their contexts. We call this tool the CATENA Instrument (Capacity Assessment, Tracking, & Enhancement through Network Analysis). This paper and NSF grantees poster will introduce the project as a whole, and also describe our Phase 1 results.