Assessing the Impact of Teaching Faculty in STEM Institutional Transformation

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While recent advances in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education research have highlighted promising instructional practices to improve undergraduate education, widespread dissemination of these practices remains difficult to achieve at most institutions. One method which may help to accomplish this is to embed teaching-focused faculty within STEM departments. An example of such teaching-focused faculty are those holding positions as Lecturer with Security of Employment (LSOE), a tenure-track faculty position within the University of California system. The important purpose of this project is to measure the impact of faculty in this kind of position at the departmental and institutional levels. This study will be one of the most expansive attempts to measure institutional teaching culture, in terms of classroom practice, faculty interactions, and perceptions of instructional practices, across not only multiple STEM departments, but multiple institutions within a connected university system. The study will also analyze the role that LSOEs play in fostering departmental-level collaborations about instruction and in impacting departmental research productivity. The results of this study will indicate whether whether this LSOE faculty track can be a means worthy of consideration in STEM programs at other institutions to increase the spread of evidence-based teaching practices. The goal of the project is to institute an assessment plan to (1) determine the impact of LSOEs on transforming instruction across various STEM disciplines at three UC campuses (Irvine, San Diego, and Davis) which have recently recruited large numbers of LSOEs and (2) demonstrate that the assessment methodologies described in the project can be used for the general purpose of departmental and institutional evaluation of teaching. The proposed methodologies include social network analysis, classroom observations, distribution of surveys regarding teaching practices, collection of departmental publication and funding numbers, and interviews with UC stakeholders and LSOEs regarding expectations of teaching faculty. By illustrating that it is possible to utilize these methods in combination to assess institutional education practices, results from this work will lay the groundwork for similar studies at other universities.