AOC: Social Dynamics of Campus Change: Creating an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda

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The Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education (CASEE) of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), working in collaboration with the American Sociological Association (ASA), is holding a two-day national workshop in early 2006 that brings together a total of 18 engineering faculty and sociological researchers in a cross-disciplinary working group to develop models, hypotheses, and study designs to investigate the social dynamics, including the social and organizational processes, that should improve the diffusion and acceptance of "new engineering curricula and pedagogy." The intent of the workshop is to develop models that will allow exploration of whether an understanding of social dynamics can increase acceptance and diffusion of enhanced curricular and pedagogical methods. Engineering educators and sociologists may explore these research questions, jointly and separately. Each workshop attendee will participate in one of three tracks to develop the following kinds of underlying questions: How does new knowledge, curriculum, and pedagogical practice gain legitimacy, and spread? What are the impediments and the facilitators of individual and institutional diffusion and change that can be modeled? What hypotheses need to be tested? What do we know from research and practice and what do we need to know to answer these questions? The results of the meeting will be documented in a special monograph jointly issued by the ASA and CASEE to deans of engineering, deans of arts and sciences, and selected professional associations. It is expected that workshop attendees will generate additional research proposals and scholarly articles.