Changing Department Culture to Achieve Inclusive Excellence in 2-year STEM Education

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This project aims to serve the national interest by developing a model to transform science department culture at a two-year college to reflect values of inclusion and to embrace the expectation that all students are capable of succeeding. This project investigates the effectiveness of a department-wide faculty professional development program to improve student learning and the student experience. Inclusive transformation is a community effort: fostering robust faculty collaboration ensures better utilization of inclusive teaching practices and more intentional and supportive classroom cultures, resulting in fundamental changes in the way students learn science. During the training program, faculty will be supported as they redesign their teaching to incorporate proven inclusive learning practices with a focus on equity. Collaborative, systematic improvement in science education creates educational spaces that welcome students into the scientific community. These changes have the potential to improve student confidence, support diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and encourage students to pursue science careers. This project plans to study the effectiveness of engaging faculty department-wide for sustainable improvement of science education at an emerging two-year Hispanic-Serving Institution. Significantly, two-year colleges support diverse student populations, and up to half of eventual STEM college graduates take classes at a two-year college. Therefore, incorporating inclusive teaching strategies into foundational courses is essential to building a diverse STEM workforce.This project intends to support systemic culture change in the interdisciplinary science department of Front Range Community College, with a scope of 11 science disciplines and approximately 50 full- and part-time faculty. The goals of this project are to improve student learning and success in science courses, decrease opportunity gaps among Persons Excluded because of their Ethnicity or Race (PEERs), and increase student retention and persistence in STEM. Department transformation will occur through collaborative professional development programs at three levels: (1) training faculty through a 2-year program focused on active learning and inclusive pedagogy, (2) departmental retreats and reflective practice groups to define and discuss common equity goals, and (3) welcoming and mentoring new faculty. This project plans to study the effectiveness of this culture change using classroom observation tools, disaggregated student success metrics, and measures of faculty engagement and student science identity. This framework can be used to support innovation and research-based inclusive practices and to inform institutional transformation efforts in other science departments. The findings from this project will contribute to understanding the efficacy of pedagogical practices in two-year colleges. The NSF program description on Advancing Innovation and Impact in Undergraduate STEM Education at Two-year Institutions of Higher Education supports projects that advance STEM education initiatives at two-year colleges. The program description promotes innovative and evidence-based practices in undergraduate STEM education at two-year colleges.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.