Collaborative Research: Scaling Support for Non-tenure Track STEM Faculty through Learning Communities and Design Teams

在国家科学基金会改善本科生STEM教育计划：教育和人力资源计划(IUSE：EHR)的支持下，该项目旨在通过改善本科生STEM学生的教与学环境来服务于国家利益。它将通过增加对非终身教职教师的支持来做到这一点，他们教授大多数本科生STEM课程，包括关键的入门课程。该项目建议建立一个以研究为基础的国家研究所，以支持非终身教职教师，该研究所将连续四年每年举办一次。该研究所将从50个学院和大学校园招聘教职员工和管理人员组成的小团队。在那里，团队将了解对非终身教职教师的支持，并制定一项支持校园兼职教师工作的计划。支持的例子包括专业发展学习社区，以及支持非终身教职教师的校园政策和做法。尽管在STEM课程中开发和采用有效的课程和教学方法正在进行许多努力，但如果不解决对教授这些课程的大部分非终身教职教师的支持问题，这些重要的创新都不会成功。因此，这个项目意义重大，因为它解决了本科生STEM中一个被忽视的挑战，该挑战具有广泛改善STEM教育的巨大潜力。除了发展支持非终身教职教员的研究所外，该项目还将在两个领域开展研究，这将有助于实现更好地支持STEM非终身教职教员的目标：1.旨在评价研究所的形成性研究；2.侧重于研究所的目标和成果的总结性研究。这项研究将创造关于教师学习社区模式的新知识，特别是对于非终身教职跟踪的STEM教师。该研究所和相关研究将对本科生STEM改革社区具有重要意义，因为它提供了关于如何利用结构化的主题学习社区来改善非终身教职教师的教学的信息。该项目对社会的主要潜在贡献包括对参与的50所学院和大学的影响，这将改善对其非终身教职教师的支持，从而帮助这些教师改善他们的教学。由于该项目，数千名教师将获得改善STEM入门课程的专业发展机会，数十万STEM学生将体验更好的STEM学习环境，并将制定如何最好地支持非终身教职教师改善教学环境的全国模式。NSF IUSE：EHR计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生的STEM教育的有效性。通过机构和社区转型轨道，该计划支持高等教育机构和学科社区转变和改进STEM教育的努力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

With support from the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources Program (IUSE:EHR), this project aims to serve the national interest by improving the STEM teaching and learning environment for undergraduate STEM students. It will do so by increasing supports for non-tenure track faculty members, who teach most of undergraduate STEM courses, including the critical introductory courses. The project proposes to develop a national, research-based Institute for supporting non-tenure track faculty, which will be held annually for four consecutive years. The Institute will recruit small teams of faculty and administrators from 50 college and university campuses. There, the teams will learn about supports for non-tenure track faculty and develop a plan for supporting the work of adjunct faculty on their campuses. Examples of supports include professional development learning communities, as well as campus policies and practices that support non-tenure track faculty. Although many efforts are underway to develop and adopt effective curricula and pedagogies in STEM courses, none of these important innovations will succeed without addressing support for the non-tenure track faculty who teach the majority of these courses. Thus, this project is significant because it addresses an overlooked challenge in undergraduate STEM that has enormous potential to improve STEM education broadly. In addition to developing the Institute for supporting non-tenure track faculty, the project will engage in research on two areas that will contribute to the goals of better supporting non-tenure track faculty in STEM: 1. formative research aimed at evaluation of the Institute; and 2. summative research focused on the Institute's goals and outcomes. The research will create new knowledge about models of faculty learning communities, particularly for non-tenure track STEM faculty. The Institute and the related research will be significant to the undergraduate STEM reform community by providing information about ways to use structured topical learning communities to improve teaching among non-tenure track faculty. The major potential contributions of this project to society include the impacts on the 50 participating colleges and universities, which will have improved support for their non-tenure track faculty and, thus, helped these faculty to improve their instruction. Because of the project, thousands of faculty will have professional development opportunities to improve STEM introductory courses, hundreds of thousands of STEM students will experience better STEM learning environments, and a national model will be developed for how to best support non-tenure track faculty in improving their teaching and learning environments. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.