LESSONS FROM INTEGRATE ON PROGRAM SCALE CHANGE: SYNTHESIZING REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE

Approaching common challenges in higher education such as broadening access to STEM education and improving outcomes for all students requires finding solutions at the individual and institutional scale. The process of overcoming barriers and creating incentives and rewards is likely to be context specific and influenced by the history and structure of the institution. However, successful programs may have common elements that can be documented and made transferrable to new institutions. As part of the 5-year NSF-funded Stem Talent Expansion Program Center InTeGrate, 16 teams at different schools were supported to implemented institutional change. These programs followed the guiding principles of InTeGrate, including connecting geoscience to societal issues, and many employed curricular materials built by InTeGrate authors. These program models represent an array of institution types and had a variety of goals for transforming teaching about Earth in their contexts, but they all learned important lessons in attempting to achieve those goals.

As the teams wrapped up their work under the auspices of the project, representatives from the teams met to learn from each other and document lessons learned in five key areas: recruiting and supporting diverse learners; teaching Earth across the curriculum; building connections to strengthen K-12 teaching; supporting transitions to the workforce, transfer, and careers; and making change happen on the large scale. The resulting resources are captured on the InTeGrate website and provide linkages between best-practices from the literature and ground-truth from the actual experiences of the teams. The guidance put forward on these pages is supported by examples from the teams that demonstrate how work on particular issues influenced and was influenced by specific circumstances and contexts.

We invite you to explore this community resource.

http://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/programs/implementation/index.html