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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • Integrating Technology with Best Practices Paves the Way

    We live in an era of change teeming with technology and environmental enhancements. Students are eager to use virtual, immersive, and interactive digital tools…

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  • Omwana Ni Wa Bhone … It Takes a Village

    To address a problem, we first need to understand that it exists.

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  • How Can We Make STEM An Inclusive Space for All?

    Throughout my entire career, I have lived at the intersections of race and gender, science, and society.

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  • How Do We Mitigate the Impact of Systemic Bias on Faculty from Underrepresented Groups?

    Last year, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that as of Fall 2019, only 2.1 percent of tenured professors at non-profit four-year colleges in the U.S.…

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  • Why Won’t STEM Faculty Just Adopt Evidence-Based Teaching Practices Already?: Exploring a Weaver’s Approach to Graduate Teacher Training

    Learn how to support future faculty in their knowledge of evidence-based teaching practices and provide them ongoing and multifaceted opportunities to explore …

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  • Leveraging Institutional Data to Advance Equity in STEM Courses

    If instructors and administrators are to understand where their efforts to advance student learning and equity are succeeding, they need to measure it.

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