Leveraging the AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative to understand and advance the institutionalization of STEM teaching & learning reforms

该项目将研究由美国大学协会（AAU）本科STEM教育倡议发起的机构转型过程，这是一项由赫尔姆斯利慈善信托基金资助的全面变革倡议，于2011年启动。这是一个雄心勃勃的项目，旨在通过推动实施更系统的教育改革观点，提高美国顶尖研究型大学本科STEM教育的重要性。这个早期的项目在8所大学参与者中引发了变革，这些参与者是从更多的AAU申请者中挑选出来的，从AAU获得了50万美元的种子资助。目前的项目以AAU的“本科STEM教学和学习系统变革框架”为指导，该框架从制度变革的领先理论和研究中发展而来。该框架确定了一系列需要解决的关键制度要素，以实现可持续的变革，强调了高级大学管理人员（自上而下的组成部分）、个别教师（自下而上的组成部分）、部门和学院形式的次学术单位（中间的组成部分）和专业学科的单独作用。该项目将记录八所大学各自内部改革的复杂性，形成一套八个案例研究。该项目的智力价值在于，它超越了实施改革的初始阶段，提出了在制度层面上，哪些因素促进了改革的启动、接受、成功、传播和影响。更新的访谈问题将在原有AAU项目时间框架的第4年（2016年）的后续调查的现有时间框架上进行，而与大学有关的其他实体和个人将成为更新调查的重点。利用合并的数据，PI团队期望有关改革重要因素的更新信息，以及这些因素的相对重要性、优先级或顺序出现。了解本科STEM教育倡议中合作机构的复杂进程具有重要价值。确定跨领域趋势（而不是机构特定因素）将特别有价值。该小组还试图对成功的机构改革进行概括、以研究为基础的概述。

This project will study the institutional transformation processes initiated through the Association of American Universities (AAU) Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative -- a comprehensive change initiative launched in 2011 with funding from the Helmsley Charitable Trust. This is an ambitious project, which seeks to increase the importance of undergraduate STEM education in the nation's top research universities by promoting the implementation of a more systemic view of educational reform. This earlier project initiated change within eight university participants that were selected from a larger pool of AAU applicants to receive seed grants of $500K from AAU. The current project is guided by AAU's "Framework for Systemic Change in Undergraduate STEM Teaching and Learning," developed from leading theories and research on institutional change. That Framework identifies a set of key institutional elements that need to be addressed in order to bring about sustainable change, emphasizing the separate roles of senior university administrators (the top-down component), individual faculty (the bottom-up component), sub academic units in the form of departments and colleges (a middle-out component), and the professional disciplines. The project will document the intricacies of reform within each of the eight universities, producing a set of eight case studies. The intellectual merit of the project lies in going beyond the initial phase of implementing the reforms to asking the questions about what factors at the institutional level facilitated the launch, acceptance, success, spread and impact of the reforms. Newer interview questions will be piggy-backed onto the existing time frames for the follow-up inquires in year 4 of the original AAU project's time frame (2016) and additional entities and individuals with the universities will be the focus of the newer investigations. Using the combined data, the PI team expects that newer information about factors important to reform, and the relative importance, priority, or sequence of the factors, to emerge. There is significant value in understanding the complex processes underlying progress at partner institutions in the Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative. Identifying cross-cutting trends (as opposed to institution-specific factors) would be especially valuable. The team also seeks to develop a generalizable, research-based snapshot of successful institutional reform.