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About

Introduction

“For far too long, undergraduate STEM education in the United States has not delivered fully on its promises…we cannot expect to reach our full potential without doing the critical work of addressing inequity in undergraduate STEM education” (Committee on Equitable and Effective Teaching in Undergraduate STEM Education, 2023). Numerous studies (Shadle et. al. 2017; Freeman et. al. 2014; Theobald et. al. 2020) have established that there is a lack of awareness and utilization of research-based practices for equitable, inclusive STEM education among higher education faculty members. In most institutions, faculty also face a number of barriers to implementing change (Shadle et. al. 2017; Schinske et. al.  2017) including lack of awareness of the research; lack of access to the research; lack of training on how to use the research; lack of time to implement new teaching practices and lack of support from their institution.

This project is designed to be the first step in a multi-phase program to transform faculty instructional practices and reduce student equity gaps in STEM achievement at the partner institutions. This project will foster new connections and build on existing relationships between STEM faculty at the University of South Alabama, a regional doctoral research institution, with their colleagues at Bishop State, Coastal Alabama, and Mississippi Gulf Coast community colleges.

Intellectual Merit

Over a 2 year period, up to 30 faculty who teach introductory STEM courses that are foundational to careers in various health and technical fields will form professional collaborations to (a) join one of three cross-institutional Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) with others who share a disciplinary focus (e.g. physical sciences/engineering; life sciences; mathematical/computational sciences); (b) activate their interest in applying evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) based on the existing STEM education literature; and (c) conduct a systematic review of the relevant literature. Participating faculty from all partner institutions will be funded for financial and logistical support to provide the time and resources to attain the project goals successfully. 

This project will: (i) improve faculty awareness of the research by curating a project library from a systematic review of national reports and seminal papers on EBIPs in the field; (ii) increase faculty access to the research by ensuring that community college partners have equitable access to article databases and analysis tools through the South Alabama libraries; (iii) enhance faculty comfort with typical quantitative and qualitative educational research measures used in the literature through an intensive summer workshop and ongoing professional development; and (iv) learn about and adapt existing theories of change to drive future efforts in curriculum design and instructional reform. 

The project will leverage the resources of the Innovation in Learning Center (ILC) at the University of South Alabama which has already initiated professional development through FLCs since 2021. Currently, two different groups of STEM faculty are engaged in FLCs at South representing physical, life, and mathematical sciences and engineering. The ILC also hosts the annual South Alabama Conference on Teaching and Learning (CoTL, now in its 14th year). Local community college faculty already participate in the planning of the conference and serve as panelists, presenters, and proposal reviewers. Thus the basic mechanisms for supporting the collaborations in this proposal already have institutional support. While 30 faculty will participate in three disciplinary FLCs in Year 1 of the project, it is anticipated that in Year 2, a subset of the faculty will continue on to design and submit an implementation grant proposal for continued Institutional Transformation. The project will be assessed through quarterly meetings of the Advisory Board which will have representatives from each of the partner institutions.

Broader Impact

MAGIC STEM will have a multi-faceted impact on STEM teaching and learning in the Gulf Coast region. Faculty from multiple institutions will enhance their capacity to engage with the STEM education literature in ways that will expose them to appropriate evidence-based instructional practices that might be used in their teaching. A subset of these faculty, who may have yet to author proposals for external funding in STEM education, will be investigators on an implementation proposal. Students at multiple institutions in the region will benefit from a consistent inclusive teaching lens in foundational and gateway STEM courses, especially as they transition from community college to university. Finally, the STEM education community at all the regional institutions (including graduate students in training who may be future faculty) will benefit from the availability of a curated resource of a subset of the relevant literature that applies to reducing STEM achievement equity gaps for our instructional settings.