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Moderator: Kristin Wobbe, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Embedded: How Teaching Professors can be Agents of Change in Revolutionizing STEM Teaching at Research Universities

Robin Dunkin, University of California-Santa Cruz

Guido Bordignon, University of California-Santa Cruz

Jody Greene, University of California-Santa Cruz

Guila Gurun, University of California-Santa Cruz

Paul Koch, University of California-Santa Cruz

Teaching professors at the University of California Santa Cruz are taking a bottom-up leadership approach to revolutionizing teaching at an R1, HSI institution. The research-centric culture and professional incentive structure at R1 universities have hindered the widespread adoption of evidence-based and equity-minded teaching practices. Over the past decade, an institutional decision to embed teaching professors in each department within the division of Physical and Biological Sciences at UC Santa Cruz has been a fruitful strategy supportive of division-wide pedagogical change. In this discussion, we intend to reflect on obstacles and solutions and solicit solution-oriented experiences from participants about topics such as the role teaching professors play in faculty development, the formal and informal work of culture change within departments, the challenges associated with only having small numbers of teaching professor per department, differences in research expectations for the teaching professor role across departments, and evaluation of teaching professors for tenure.

Building a Critical Mass: Leveraging a Faculty Learning Community to Address Microaggressions

Kristen Helmer, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Paula L. Sturdevant Rees, University of Massachusetts Amherst

The two presenters – one a faculty developer and Director of Programming for DEI with our Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), the other the Assistant Dean and Director of the Engineering Office of DEI – will describe their collaborative effort to drive departmental change around the issue of microaggressions. Departmental practices and culture in STEM fields are often characterized by implicit biases which can manifest in microaggressions with detrimental impact particularly on students from historically marginalized populations. For changes in departmental practices and culture to happen, it is necessary to develop a critical mass of people in a department who share common language and understandings about critical issues, such as microaggressions. This is hard to accomplish through general faculty development programming offered through a teaching center. We were able to build such a critical mass by offering a series of virtual workshops on recognizing and responding to microaggressions in Spring 2021 to faculty and graduate students in all departments of the College of Engineering. This collaboration developed out of the relationship that the two presenters built through the year-long TIDE (Teaching for Inclusiveness, Diversity, & Equity) Ambassadors faculty learning community. Through our impactful collaboration we were able to a) reach faculty who would otherwise not attend CTL programming on this topic; b) impact department practices and culture by building foundational knowledge on the topic with a critical mass of people in each department; and c) engage faculty as social change agents.

Building a More Inclusive Classroom in Gateway STEM Courses & Effecting Change at the Department Level through an Instructor Community of Practice

Melissa Oddo, University of Toledo

Denise Bartell, University of Toledo

Lesley Berhan, University of Toledo

In this session, we will discuss the creation of an innovative model for faculty development for gateway STEM instructors, the Equity Champion Community of Practice, as part of our participation with the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities’ (APLU) Student Experience Project (SEP). We will also discuss the impact of the Equity Champions program on departments with multiple faculty participants, and the potential to effect departmental change through the participation of Department Chairs in the program. The Equity Champions, started in Summer 2020, creates a semester-long community of practice wherein instructors learn together, share ideas, and work together to develop resources supporting equity in their gateway STEM classes. Equity Champions have implemented evidence-based changes in their classroom to improve students’ sense of belonging, identity safety, and growth mindset, including: revising their syllabi to include student attuned-language, creating welcome letters and videos, and sharing their personal stories of belonging. They have also used an innovative new tool called Ascend which assessed the immediate impact of changes in their classrooms. One member said, “being an Equity Champion has opened my eyes to how I can create a more inclusive classroom. I feel the tools I implemented, from exam wrappers to sharing my own personal struggles, have helped me become a more effective instructor and improve student success.” We will explain how this model has the ability to effect lasting change in faculty behavior and have an impact on meaningful change in attitudes vs. time commitment associated with these ongoing faculty development experiences.