Bridging to STEM Excellence: Leveraging a Consortium of National STEM Education Initiatives to Improve Undergraduate STEM Teaching and Learning

在NSF改善本科STEM教育计划：教育和人力资源（IUSE：EHR）的支持下，该项目旨在通过提高STEM教育机构转型的能力来服务于国家利益。在各级实施基于研究的STEM计划和教学改进是国家的优先事项。这一优先事项的基础是认识到循证教学和相关的方案支持（例如，教师专业发展;与学生服务的联系;和课外活动）提高所有学生的成果，并增加在STEM中代表性不足的群体的参与。该项目旨在创建一个试点计划，以加速采用部门和计划级干预措施，以提高学生的学习成果和保留STEM。该项目计划建立和培训一个由经验丰富的教师开发人员组成的咨询团队，他们来自五个旨在改善本科STEM教育的国家计划。 这些举措包括BioQUEST课程联盟，全国地球科学教师协会，国家科学和公民参与中心的新公民参与和责任科学教育（SENCER）计划，过程导向的引导探究学习（POGIL）项目和科学教学暑期学院。每个与机构合作的三人小组将包括五项倡议中的三项倡议的代表，这些倡议是根据机构所期望的变革重点选择的。 将与以下五个伙伴机构试行这一办法：贝克斯菲尔德学院、加州州立大学奇科分校、格鲁吉亚州立大学、俄亥俄州州立大学和里士满大学。通过这一项目，五个已确立的倡议将组成一个联合体，与最初的五个机构伙伴合作。这一努力利用了NSF在过去二十年中的投资，支持整合NSF支持的国家STEM教育计划，以提供全面的支持，帮助教育工作者提高学生的成绩。联合会成员将协作建立一个实践社区，并建立一个对所有五项举措的改进做法都很了解的咨询团队。然后，联合会将与五个机构伙伴进行一轮磋商、行动和后续支助。该项目的目标是通过在五项国家举措中建立一个实践社区，从而扩大其影响范围并协调其对专业发展和方案变革的支持，加快高等教育的变革。 此外，该计划的咨询计划将作为这些协调的国家倡议和个人机构努力之间的桥梁，以改善教学和学生支持的做法。评价活动将利用同业交流圈的透镜，提供关于咨询模式的形成性和总结性反馈。项目期间进行的研究将审查每个机构改革努力的影响，包括开发新的工具来研究改革的准备情况。联合会成员的集体专门知识及其现有资源和方法，沿着一套支持咨询团的新材料，将通过一个公共网络资料库提供。NSF IUSE：EHR计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。该项目是在机构和社区转型轨道，通过该IUSE：EHR计划支持的努力，以改变和改善高等教育机构和学科社区的STEM教育.该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响力审查标准进行评估的支持.

With support from the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources (IUSE:EHR), this project aims to serve the national interest by increasing capacity for institutional transformation in STEM education. Implementing research-based improvements to STEM programs and instruction at all levels is a national priority. This priority is underpinned by the recognition that evidence-based teaching and related programmatic support (e.g., faculty professional development; connections with student services; and co-curricular activities) improve outcomes for all students and increase participation by groups that are underrepresented in STEM. This project seeks to create a pilot program to accelerate adoption of department- and program-level interventions proven to improve student learning outcomes and retention in STEM. The project plans to establish and train a consultancy corps of experienced faculty developers from five national initiatives that aim to improve undergraduate STEM education. The initiatives include the BioQUEST Curricular Consortium, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement's Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER) program, The Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) Project, and the Summer Institutes for Scientific Teaching. Each three-member team that works with an institution will include representation from three of the five initiatives, chosen to match the institution's desired change focus. The five partner institutions with whom this approach will be piloted are Bakersfield College, California State University-Chico, Georgia State University, The Ohio State University, and the University of Richmond. Through this project, five well-established initiatives will come together as a Consortium to work with an initial set of five institutional partners. This effort leverages NSF investments over the past two decades by supporting the integration of national, NSF-supported STEM education initiatives to provide holistic support that will help educators achieve improved student outcomes. Consortium members will collaboratively build a community of practice and develop a consultancy corps that is knowledgeable in the improvement practices of all five initiatives. The Consortium will then undertake a cycle of consultation, action, and follow-up support with the five institutional partners. The goal of the project is to accelerate change in higher education by developing a community of practice among five national initiatives, thus increasing their reach and coordinating their support for professional development and programmatic change. In addition, the program's consultancy program will serve as a bridge between these coordinated national initiatives and individual institutional efforts to improve instruction and student support practices. Evaluation activities will provide formative and summative feedback on the consultancy model, using a community of practice lens. Research conducted during the project will examine the impact of the change efforts at each institution, including the development of new tools to study readiness for change. The collective expertise of Consortium members and their available resources and approaches, along with a set of new materials to support the consultancy corps, will be made available through a public web repository. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. This project is in the Institutional and Community Transformation track, through which the IUSE: EHR 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.