The Disruptor

Promoting research on inclusive STEM ecosystems for faculty, students, and the greater undergraduate community. Below, you will find our latest blog entry and a complete archive of our posts. Enjoy!

Our Latest Blog

 

  • Student-Faculty-Staff Teams for Institutional Change: Strategies for Authentically Including Student Voices

    Students are at the center of education. Yet, education improvement projects are often limited in how they incorporate student voices, relying on student advis…

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Our Archive

 

  • Student-Faculty-Staff Teams for Institutional Change: Strategies for Authentically Including Student Voices

    Students are at the center of education. Yet, education improvement projects are often limited in how they incorporate student voices, relying on student advis…

    Learn More

  • Advancing Physics Education Where Diversity Resides: The Organization for Physics at Two-Year Colleges (OPTYCs)

    Caption: Cohort 1 of the Creating Environments that Reach Every Student Program. Participants sort ideas during a brainstorming session. St. Louis, Jan. 2025.O…

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  • How a Professional Learning Program Turned Best Practices into Better Outcomes

    Improving learning in undergraduate STEM courses is a critical need to reduce high failure rates and broaden access to STEM careers. In particular, the Mathema…

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  • How to Use Virtual Platforms to Design Accessible Inquiry Projects for High-Enrollment Undergraduate Courses

    There is no time like the present to develop alternative, yet meaningful experiences that expose undergraduates to research. Mentored research is associated wi…

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  • An Invitation to Explore Alternative Design Features in Undergraduate Research Experiences

    Undergraduate research has long been a springboard for future scientists, but not all students can access these transformative opportunities. What if we reimag…

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  • Problems Associated with Interpreters Not Being Able to Fluently and Accurately Interpret STEM Content

    Additional Authors: Cristophorus Budidharma, Graduate Student, Lamar University; Ashley Greene, Assistant Professor, Gallaudet University; Sean Hauschildt, Ass…

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  • Training Teaching Assistants to Create a Positive Motivational Climate

    ProblemStudent recruitment and retention in Computer Science (CS) is a well-known challenge, and there are national efforts to increase participation in CS.1,1…

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  • Tackling Real-World Problems: Impacts, Observations, and Challenges after Seven Years of the Environment Corps

    Caption: Stormwater Corps students learn to read development site plans with Instructors Bruce Hyde and Mike Dietz.In the spring of 2016, faculty members from …

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  • Course Withdrawal Dates at Community Colleges

    Caption: Students in a Geology course work collaboratively on lab exercises. Students benefit from policies that give them every opportunity to be successful i…

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  • Accelerating Progress Towards Asset-based Mathematics Teacher Preparation Through a Networked Improvement Community: It’s All About Partnerships

    Preparing secondary mathematics teachers who are committed to using asset-based pedagogical practices requires a network of partnerships among stakeholders.1 A…

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  • Characterizing Student Perspectives on Departmental Culture: The Student DELTA Survey

    Traditional Student Experience MetricsNational reports have revealed that although undergraduate education has undergone significant reform, students are not g…

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  • A Place Where I Can Belong: Investment in a Learning Community for Community College Transfer Students in the Marine Geosciences

    Community college students are untapped human and research capital.

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  • Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining STEM Pedagogies

    Additional Authors: John L. Pecore, Ph.D. (Professor, University of West Florida); Melissa K. Demetrikopoulos, Ph.D. (Director, Institute for Biomedical Philos…

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  • Change Strategies and Tools to Support STEM Faculty’s Enactment of Equitable, Student-Centered Instruction

    (Caption: BETTER in STEM Cohort 1 Faculty at the Summer 2023 Workshop)IntroductionThere is a shortage of highly qualified STEM professionals in the United Stat…

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  • Creating Courses that Integrate Science and Culture: Facilitating Learning Across Three Knowledge Domains

    (Caption: Image from the Florentine Codex depicting the importance and knowledge of agriculture in 16th century Aztec culture.)In this blog, a historian of sci…

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  • Making Systemic Changes: Questioning Meritocracy at the Faculty Level

    (Image Caption: When thinking about a healthy ecosystem, the research team created this tree for inspiration. The roots show practices we hoped became norms an…

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  • Levers for Change 2023: Enacting a National Agenda for Undergraduate STEM Education

    View the full report here: Levers for Change: Enacting a National Agenda for Undergraduate STEM EducationFrom July 30 to August 1, 2023, the American Associati…

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  • The Value of Community Colleges: Bridging Gaps and Building Pathways to Increase Student Success

    (Video credit: CCC Marcom)Innovative Evidence-based Strategies to Disrupt the Current Community College NarrativeI was honored to be invited to talk at a confe…

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  • Community Colleges: Catalysts for Building and Diversifying the STEM Ecosystem

    Video Caption: Expanding access to our community.In the last two decades, the United States has grappled with the challenge of preparing, diversifying, and exp…

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  • College as a Hero’s Journey: Faculty and Student Self-Reflection Grounds Intervention Research

    VSU Peer-mentors and mentees from Petersburg High School pose for a photo while visiting the Musem of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC (I…

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  • Inclusive Learning with Embedded Digital Bioskills

    Embed Digital Bioskills as an Educational Approach to Unlock Inclusive Learning in Undergraduate EducationMany authentic data sets and tools are readily availa…

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  • How Can the Underrepresentation Curriculum Increase Representation in Our Communities?

    Caption: Jalisa Ferguson, Ph.D., and Izzy Berry '22 in their James Center lab. Photos by Angelique Herring '19 and Penh Alicandro '22.Why We Need The Underrepr…

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  • Synergies, Not Silos: Why Isolated Initiatives Won’t Disrupt the Status Quo

    STEM departments have struggled, as has much of higher education, to advance student success while achieving racial equity.1 The continually-low numbers of Bla…

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