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

 

  • Expand, Sustain, or Fizzle? How to Support Institutional Change Efforts in STEM Throughout Personnel Turnover

    Caption: Personnel turnover can occur in different ways and impact how institutional change efforts expand, sustain, or fizzle out.  Figure 1: Illustration of …

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Our Archive

 

  • 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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  • Want More Women in Geoscience? Consider Their Math Attitudes

    Geoscience has made concerted efforts to increase the number of women entering and graduating from undergraduate geoscience programs, but despite these efforts…

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  • Addressing Systemic Issues in STEM Education: Potential and Perils of XR Technologies

    Caption: Authors Michele McColgan, Ph.D. and Jason Morphew, Ph.D. provide an overview of the MARVLS app, an augmented reality app, which helps students develop…

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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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  • Preparing Non-traditional Learners as Next Generation Science Teachers

    Learn how Dr. Sharma designed a course that draws on adult learning theories and first-hand experience to teach non-traditional learners.

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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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  • Creating and Maintaining Communities to Support Faculty Implementing Effective Evidence-Based Strategies

    We need to support faculty so that they persist with research-based instructional strategies, learn new techniques, and engage in reflective practice.

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  • Handing Rose-Colored Glasses to STEM Faculty: Institutional Priorities in Disciplinary Identity Development

    As educators, we are setting the rules. As scientists, we can draw on our skills and training to find and use tools that both broaden participation in the scie…

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  • How Lightweight, Scalable, and Relational Learning Experiences Can Help Overcome System-Level Challenges in Education

    Can exploratory reading groups (ERGs) designed to be lightweight, scalable, and relational create system-level changes in education?

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  • Patching Together a Plan for Student Success

    Let us explore where innovative learning environments are best used to make learning more accessible and education more flexible and equitable, complementing t…

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  • Racial Equity in the STEM Math Pathway: Designing for Disproportionate Benefit

    We all need to redouble efforts to advance racial equity in the STEM math pathway on our campuses by intentionally designing for positive benefit.

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  • How Collaborating Across Boundaries Fosters Community-Engaged Partnerships

    This model provides students with learning experiences that deepen their understanding of how both disciplinary knowledge and interdisciplinary collaboration c…

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  • Power of Partnerships

    Partnerships can help us address growing inequities in STEM education and offer strategies to optimize progress toward better STEM learning for all.

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  • Make Time Now for Cultural Inclusion and Healing

    Turning away from old biases and stereotypes requires that the stakeholders are able to devote time to become aware, interrupt the automatic responses, and for…

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  • How Storytelling Inspires Representation in STEM Communities

    How do we make sure all stakeholders have representation in STEM? Learn how storytelling helps us get there.

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    The Disruptor LIVE: Reflections on One Year of Evidence-Based Strategies that Advance Equity

    How can we empower evidence-based systemic change that advances equity?

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  • Teaching Outside the Textbook: Integrating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into the Science Classroom Using Real-World Experiences

    Introducing diverse perspectives in science courses help students progress from simply acquiring knowledge to questioning their own or other assumptions and ar…

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  • Building Inclusion in STEM Through Activation of Multicontext Theory

    Our journey begins with a story by co-author, Roberto Ibarra, and his discovery of a new paradigm for enhancing diversity as he analyzed his social science stu…

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  • Bringing the Field into the Classroom: Using Story Maps as an Inclusive Component of Virtual Field Experiences for Beginning Students

    Through story-mapping, students can address open-ended questions, critically evaluate existing information, and identify gaps in the current knowledge base.

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