Conference: Building Leadership Capacity For STEM Education Innovation at Two-Year Colleges

This project aims to serve the national interest by increasing participation in NSF funded education reform projects among two-year college faculty. Two-year colleges play an essential role in the post-secondary STEM education landscape because they serve diverse student populations, provide accessible degree pathways, and are widely distributed geographically. This project brings together published resources, project expertise, and guided planning activities to increase faculty access to, and participation in, the federal funding process. These materials will be developed and disseminated through a face-to-face conference for 40 faculty and an online community space targeted directly to two-year college settings. The project seeks to both increase the number and quality of NSF proposals from new institutions and contribute to enhancing the student experience for diverse student populations. Generating opportunities for faculty from two-year colleges to engage with national STEM education reform projects is an important mechanism to promote the adoption of effective education practices and build faculty capacity for pursuing instructional innovations in the evolving post-secondary education landscape. The goal of this project is to build leadership capacity and facilitate NSF proposal submission among 2-year college STEM faculty. This project aims to achieve this by convening a face-to-face workshop and hosting a collaborative online community. In order to support two-year college faculty participation in NSF funded education projects, a set of existing proposal preparation, project planning, and management resources for use in the preparation of proposals will be adapted. The modular curriculum design seeks to allow flexible implementation of the support resources to address diverse use scenarios and delivery modalities. This project brings together an experienced organizing committee of two-year college STEM faculty who will use both the face to face and online support community contexts to raise awareness of funding opportunities, support proposal development, and encourage participation in funded projects. The QUBESHub platform will be used to facilitate the design, implement the workshop, disseminate outcomes, and evaluate the proposal preparation resources. The NSF IUSE: Innovation in Two-Year College STEM Education (ITYC) Program seeks to accelerate the impact of and advance knowledge about emerging and evidence-based practices in undergraduate STEM education at two-year colleges. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.