Increasing the Effectiveness of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion-Focused Institutional Change Teams through a Community of Transformation

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This project aims to serve the national interest by increasing the effectiveness of organizational change efforts, so that university science and engineering programs are able to attract and retain students and faculty from diverse and minoritized communities, contributing to a more innovative and representative workforce. Change efforts in higher education are challenging, in part because faculty have not received training in organizational change, and in part because effective change needs involvement from diverse stakeholders beyond the professoriate. As a consequence, institutions may continue to use policies and practices that do not effectively address gaps in participation, such as for students of color, women, and people with disabilities. Previous research on organizational change in higher education highlights the importance of social relationships for equipping faculty and other stakeholders to make significant changes to their beliefs and practices. In that vein this project will create a cross-institutional Community of Transformation (CoT) to support university change agents who are working to make changes focused on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) in their own departments and institutions. This approach is a particularly good match for JEDI-centered organizational change, which requires not only individual adoption of new practices, but also transformation of institutional structures and practices. Through an innovative approach to community building and storycrafting, the project intends to help CoT members make significant JEDI-centered institutional change efforts, learn from one another’s experiences, and learn effective change strategies towards a more just future. This work aims to advance understanding of how CoTs can help JEDI-oriented institutional change efforts thrive.This project plans to convene a cross-institutional CoT of JEDI change agents in engineering. Through both virtual and in-person events, participants will increase their resilience and skills in enacting change at their institutions, build community and co-support for each other as change agents, and increase their individual and collective agency to create organizational change. This project hopes to provide key insights into improving faculty’s change agency by integrating professional development into the CoT, fostering relationships through which members will learn from each other, and evaluating how a cross-institutional CoT can improve change agents’ capacity to improve their own departmental and institutional systems to broaden participation in STEM and advance JEDI outcomes. These key insights will be developed through research on the CoT participants and their efforts to promote change. The research team will use narrative and discourse methods to analyze CoT activities and surveys, interviews, and focus groups with CoT members. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through its 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.