AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative Tobin Smith AAU Vice President for Policy ISSUES Workshop January 30, 2014

History Boyer Commission Report, 1998 “Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities” Undergraduate Research Pilot Study, 2001 Standards for Success, 2003 “Understanding University Success“ Informal Survey of STEM Retention Programs at AAU Universities, 2010 AAU Undergraduate STEM Initiative, 2011

The goal of the AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative is to help influence the culture of STEM departments at AAU universities so that faculty are encouraged and supported to use evidence-based, student- centered, active, sustainable pedagogy in their classes, particularly at the freshman and sophomore levels. Mission Statement

Framework (Goal #1) – Develop a framework of evidence-based practices that can be used to improve STEM teaching and to measure these improvements AAU STEM Projects & AAU STEM Network (Goal #2) – Identify a subset of AAU institutions that will serve as projects sites to implement the framework – Find ways to engage all of our members Incentives (Goals #3 and #4) – Explore institutional and departmental incentives for good teaching – Work with federal agencies on mechanisms to encourage good teaching Promising Practices (Goal #5) – Develop effective means for sharing information about effective undergrad STEM programs, approaches, and methods for evaluating teaching "AAU is not conducting another study or research project on STEM education. We are moving to implement the results of the latest research into science and math pedagogy.” Hunter Rawlings, AAU President Key Components of AAU Initiative

Framework for Systemic Change in Undergraduate STEM Teaching & Learning The Framework outline provides a set of key institutional elements that need to be addressed in order to bring about sustainable change. Faculty Members Department Chairs College & University Administrators Institutions

Requested feedback on the framework Tell us about current undergraduate STEM reform initiatives on your campus Tell us about how you evaluate, recognize and reward effective teaching, and if there are significant differences across your campus What are the barriers that exist to implementing evidence- based STEM education practices on your campus 42 of our 62 institutions responded 21 public, 19 private, 2 Canadian Campus Engagement: Framework

Undergraduate STEM reform initiatives in process on AAU campus *Based on 42 AAU institutions comments to the STEM Initiative Framework question: “Do you have significant undergraduate STEM reform initiatives already in process?” AAU institutions have already undertaken a number of innovative efforts to improve undergraduate STEM education What We Learned

*Based on 42 AAU institutions comments to the STEM Initiative Framework questions. Campus Barriers to Implementing Evidence-Based Teaching

Brown University Michigan State University The University of Arizona University of California, Davis University of Colorado, Boulder The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of Pennsylvania Washington University in St. Louis STEM Project Sites

NSF “Widening Implementation & Demonstration of Evidence-Based Reforms” (WIDER) grant Development of a set of metrics that will allow individual institutions to Document teaching practices Measure learning outcomes Assess factors that support sustained institutional change in undergraduate STEM teaching and learning framework Metrics & Evaluation AAU will encourage its institutions to collect data, and to share information on these metrics with peer institutions for potential benchmarking.

 Maintain interest, involvement and momentum at member institutions Sustain campus-based dialogues Convene workshops Information sharing among campus points of contact  Share best practices Build examples around the core framework elements  Metrics & Evaluation Metrics to shift institutional culture toward evidence-based instructional practices AAU STEM Network

 Coalition for Reform of Undergraduate STEM Education  Cottrell Scholars and HHMI Professors  National Undergraduate STEM Partnership  Disciplinary Societies Collaboration & Collective Action