Author(s):
The SIRIUS II project (Sustainable Interdisciplinary Research to Inspire Undergraduate Success) addresses the need for STEM curricula that promote inclusion of diverse groups and foster students’ real-world problem-solving skills by elevating faculty expertise and collaboration through a Community of Transformation (CoT). This I-USE project brings together faculty from a four-year masters-granting university (FYU) and five local community colleges (CCs) to develop course-based Authentic Learning Experiences (cALEs) centered around the health of Northern California waterways. These cALEs, which include CUREs (Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences) and authentic design projects, expand the number of students who get to do authentic research and design. By incorporating relevant activities with results that can be shared beyond the classroom, we aim to inspire students to continue in STEM disciplines and enter the STEM workforce. Our project is unique in its scale and degree of interdisciplinarity. While it is localized geographically, over 35 faculty from the six institutions have participated, and ten disciplines are represented (biology, chemistry, environmental science, physics, math, geography, geology, and electrical, mechanical, and civil engineering). Over nearly four years, we have fostered community-building and collaboration through an inaugural week-long Summer Institute, 1-2 day workshops for subsequent summers, short workshops during the academic semesters, and annual STEM Conferences for all faculty and students to share cALE activities and network with each other, the campus communities, and members of the public. Development of our faculty CoT was informed by the Science of Team Science (SoTS) literature, and our intentional incorporation of exercises to encourage disciplinary humility and shared vision helped faculty organically form collaborations across disciplines and institutions. Our discussions and activities have also been guided by equity-minded teaching, as we collectively consider how incorporating cALEs can be an inclusive practice, examine how cALEs might create new barriers, and discuss how we can design and implement cALEs to maximize their benefits for all students. Our mixed methods study examines how our CoT model promotes collaboration across two very different institution types and across disciplines with different cultures and epistemologies to encourage and sustain curriculum reform. We have studied the dynamics of the SIRIUS II community using Social Network Analysis surveys at different time points and semi-structured interviews with faculty participants. Notable outcomes include sustained collaborations across institutions and disciplines, with 22 of 25 survey respondents reporting participation in at least one collaboration before year three of the SIRIUS II project. Interview data reveals positive attitudes toward the collaborations and highlights benefits faculty perceive for themselves, their students, and their curricula. Faculty also reveal a wide range of challenges that the SIRIUS II Leadership Team is responding to in various ways. To our knowledge, this study is the first to apply the SoTS framework to a STEM education professional development context. This study also supports the idea that collaborations between academic professionals directly support faculty change in a CoT. While these findings are specific to the SIRIUS II project, we feel that communicating this work could benefit change leaders and researchers operating in similar contexts.
Coauthors
Kelly McDonald, California State University, Sacramento; Cathy Ishikawa, California State University, Sacramento; Julie Fogarty, California State University, Sacramento; Ethan Roberts, California State Univeristy, Sacramento; Linda Zarzana, American River College, Sacramento, CA
