Collaborative Research: Broadening the Fusion of STEM and Business Curricula in Undergraduate Sustainability Education

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This project aims to serve the national interest in STEM literacy by developing and implementing sustainability curricula that fuse STEM and business perspectives. The overall project goal is to improve the preparation of students to address complex societal issues that require application of environmental and economic concepts. The project involves the collaboration of 24 faculty members from diverse STEM and business disciplines at Bentley University, Wittenberg University, and Northern Illinois University. Focusing on two sustainability challenges, these faculty will collaboratively and iteratively design 24 modular transdisciplinary case studies. These transdisciplinary case studies, which will fuse STEM and business perspectives, have the potential to help STEM and non-STEM majors understand and manage sustainability problems more effectively. The project's assessment/evaluation experts will measure impacts of the transdisciplinary case studies on student learning and perspectives, as well as on faculty collaboration and instructional practices. The project intends that the transdisciplinary curricular materials it develops will be accessible and transportable to any institution. Thus, the project has the potential to enhance sustainability education for a large number of undergraduates and to help to educate a scientifically literate populace in the business environment where it may be especially valuable. The project aims to transform faculty perspectives about transdisciplinary teaching and collaborative curriculum development, create and disseminate deliverables in the form of tested curricular modules, advance student learning outcomes relevant to sustainability, and develop greater understanding of structures, processes, and attitudes that underpin a proposed model for transdisciplinary transformational change. Building on prior work, the project will establish local learning communities of faculty from STEM and business departments at each institution to design and implement case study modules. Each module will contain a common exercise, several options for course-specific exercises focused on different disciplinary needs, and an assessment plan. A dissemination portal will be hosted by the Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College, which will also have primary responsibility for assessment of student learning outcomes. A mixed-methods external evaluation aligned with a proposed theory of change will focus on faculty perspectives and institutional transformation, including social network data. The project is funded by the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources (IUSE: EHR), which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. The project is in the Development and Implementation Tier, and in the Institutional and Community Transformation Track. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, IUSE: EHR 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.