Conference: A Virtual Workshop for Building Leadership Capacity to Support Two-Year College and Disciplinary Society Collaborations

This project aims to serve the national interest by strengthening the connection between two-year college faculty and their respective disciplinary societies, something both groups have been striving to achieve. There is a critical need for the development of a core group of leaders to enact sustainable change that will enhance these connections. This project will facilitate and evaluate a virtual, multi-day workshop with a focus on leadership development that will include teams of two-year college faculty and disciplinary society representatives. Eleven disciplines will participate. The first part of the workshop will include sessions on specific leadership skills and planning for participant-led outreach activities to put those skills into practice, with opportunities for cross-discipline sharing. These outreach activities for their two-year college and disciplinary society colleagues will include workshops offered at their campus, in their region, and at disciplinary society conferences as well as individual meetings with administrators. Building on their disciplinary action plans, the outreach activities will engage people beyond the workshop participants and communicate the benefits of two-year college engagement with societies. In the last part of the workshop, participants will report on their outreach activities and discuss next steps. The leadership capacities gained and practiced in this workshop will contribute to the broader STEM enterprise by empowering the participants to be agents of change on campus, in their disciplinary societies, and in cross-disciplinary efforts. The project will foster engagement between two-year colleges and disciplinary societies, strengthen connections between two-year college faculty and their disciplinary communities, and support sharing of effective strategies across multiple disciplines and disciplinary societies. The workshop goals are to (1) provide leadership development that supports participants in advancing in leadership roles needed to promote two-year-college and disciplinary society collaborative efforts; (2) support participants in leading outreach activities that build on disciplinary action plans and communicate the benefits of two-year college-disciplinary society engagement; (3) build networks and communities of participants within and across disciplines; and (4) investigate the impact of this leadership development in moving collaborations between two-year colleges and disciplinary societies forward. This project will advance knowledge of effective strategies for enhancing collaborations between two-year colleges and disciplinary societies through an analysis of the outreach activities led by participants. This project will also advance knowledge of how the workshop influenced participant leadership development and confidence using pre- and post-surveys. A workshop report will be distributed to all participants and disciplinary societies and will be available to all in the professional and academic scientific community on the workshop website. A practice brief will be shared with organizations for two-year colleges and administrators. 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.