WIDER: EAGER: State Policy and Undergraduate STEM Education, Uncharted Ground

该项目与在同一时间框架内进行的一个补充项目协调，并加强和加快其进展。项目目标是在高等教育中更重视设计和实施本科科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）课程，这些课程将循证实践纳入其中，并使公民能够应对涉及STEM的全球挑战（在能源，环境，健康和食品等领域）。 研究表明，这两个问题往往可以成功地解决连接STEM课程的STEM组件的现实世界的问题。该项目的设计是积极影响高等教育机构，使它们更加重视这些目标，使它们更加了解国家一级决策机构的需要并与之联系起来。国家一级的政策制定者在确定STEM教育的方向方面越来越重要，并正在探索如何利用政策杠杆来实现STEM本科课程设计和交付的有意义的，持久的改进。该发展经济学所项目与目前由国家科学基金会/生物学组织理事会支持的国家社会环境综合中心资助的“风险项目”协调。 在其活动中，SESYNC正在支持一项名为“改变本科STEM教育的国家政策”的项目。“这个合资企业的PI正在与来自五个州的团队协调和合作：加州、科罗拉多、缅因州、马里兰州和新墨西哥州。该项目正在确定其教育系统的相似性和差异，并正在研究每个州的STEM参数政策问题，以找到改进本科STEM课程内容和教学方法的方法，并使STEM教育与州环境和经济可持续性优先事项保持一致。这些国家的团队包括来自高等教育，州政府和商业行业的代表。它们共同代表了不同规模和复杂性的范围，呈现出独特的经济和社会结构以及教育制度。通过这个项目，这些州正在共同学习战略性地利用州一级的现有网络，以促进基于证据的课程方法，这些方法借鉴了基于研究的文献，这些文献涉及将STEM研究中的思想和探究形式应用于现实世界问题的有效方法。 这是实践科学家和参与公民必须解决的可持续未来的知识。使用现实世界的问题是一种特别有效的高影响力的实践，可以加深对复杂概念和原理的知识和理解。

This project is coordinated with and strengthens and accelerates progress in a complementary project that is happening in the same timeframe. Project goals are to give greater weight to designing and especially implementing undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses in higher education that incorporate evidence-based practices, and to equip citizens to address global challenges involving STEM (in areas such as energy, environment, health, and food). Research indicates that both problems can often be successfully addressed by connecting STEM courses to the STEM components of real-world problems. The design of this project is to positively influence institutions of higher education to give more weight to these goals by making them more aware of and connected to the needs of state-level policy-making bodies. State-level policymakers are taking on growing importance in setting the direction of STEM education and are exploring how policy levers can be used to effect meaningful, lasting improvement in the design and delivery of STEM undergraduate courses. This WIDER project is coordinated with a "Venture Project" currently funded through the NSF/ BIO Directorate-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). Among its activities SESYNC is supporting a venture called "State Policies to Transform Undergraduate STEM Education." The PIs of this venture are coordinating and working with teams from five states: California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, and New Mexico. This project is identifying similarities and differences in their educational systems and is examining each state's policy issues with STEM parameters to find ways to improve the content and pedagogy in undergraduate STEM courses and to align STEM education with state priorities for environmental and economic sustainability. These state teams include representatives from higher education, state government, and business & industry. Jointly they represent a spectrum of different sizes and complexities, presenting distinctive economic and social structures and educational systems. Through this project these states are learning jointly to strategically utilize existing networks at the state level to promote evidence-based approaches to the curriculum that draw from the research-based literature on effective approaches to the application of ideas and forms of inquiry derived from the study of STEM to real-world problems. It is this knowledge that both practicing scientists and engaged citizens must address for a sustainable future. The use of real-world problems is an especially effective high impact practice for deepening knowledge and understanding of complex concepts and principles.