YOU DON’T SAY NO TO HEATHER MACDONALD: DEVELOPMENT OF 2YC FACULTY CHANGE AGENTS AS REGIONAL GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION LEADERS

The positive impacts of STEM faculty professional development (PD) on participants’ subsequent use of active learning instructional practices (i.e., Manduca et al., 2017) makes a strong case for the need for sustained PD opportunities for STEM faculty at 2-year (2YC) and 4-year (4YC) institutions. To implement more local, regional, and national PD experiences for 2YC and 4YC STEM faculty, however, a core group of faculty leaders must be developed. The Supporting and Advancing Geoscience Education in 2-Year Colleges (SAGE2YC) program supports 2YC geoscience faculty, known as “Change Agents”, in implementing evidence-based instructional practices in their classrooms and implementing high-impact changes in their programs and at their institutions. A significant component of a Change Agent’s work is sustained leadership development, including hosting PD workshops in their region on supporting student success, broadening participation, and professional pathways. This presentation highlights the role of SAGE2YC in developing regional 2YC geoscience faculty networks and individual faculty leadership with a focus on a Change Agent team from southern California. Over the course of the program, we developed and implemented PD workshops for southern California geoscience faculty, academic counselors, and graduate students. Early workshops focused on geoscience faculty and academic counselors. Ebert-May et al (2015) found that early professional development for preservice (future) faculty resulted in participants’ greater use of learner-centered instructional strategies, and to that end, we invited graduate students from local 4-year institutions to our 2018 regional workshop, Strong Starts and Transitions. In this workshop, we piloted several career trajectory-related sessions appropriate for preservice and current 2YC faculty. Sessions included infusing societally relevant materials into geoscience courses, PD opportunities for 2YC faculty and students, the 2YC job search, and reviews of CVs, teaching statements, and teaching demonstrations. We will use workshop evaluation data and case studies of selected 2YC faculty to illustrate the impacts of the SAGE2YC Faculty Agents of Change program on career trajectory, leadership development, and construction of a regional 2YC geoscience network.