STEM Netweaver Dialogues
The Network of Stem Education Centers (NSEC) is an organization of campus-based STEM centers and offices that serves as a catalyst for broader national educational transformation in STEM, including research on teaching and learning STEM disciplines at all levels. NSEC is working with other STEM Networks to enhance our collective capacity by identifying effective network design and facilitation strategies.
During the last half of 2019, NSEC convened three 90-min network learning dialogues with four leading experts in network facilitation, systems change, and STEM education reform (see below for bios). Our focus was how to design, create, facilitate, and manage transformative STEM learning networks.
The topics were:
Maintaining Connection for Transformation
Transformative Capacity Building
Transformative Assessment
These dialogues are being analyzed in conjunction with a parallel set of discussions among social-ecological netweavers to advance netweaving practice and identify next steps. We captured the results of these dialogues here – below, you can see a visual record of each of these conversations, accompanied by the core questions from that dialogue. We are analyzing the results of these dialogues in order to identify the insights and identify possible next steps to support a STEM netweaving community of practice.
Sweat the Small Stuff: What happens in between a networks "big events"? When people are back at their home base, how can we facilitate interaction that supports transformative systems change?
Sweat the Small Stuff Continued
Assessing Transformation: How do we assess transformation, both in terms of outcome and "capacity"? What do we do with this information?
Transformative Capacity: What does it mean for a network to develop transformative capacity, how do we know it when we see it, and how do we as netweavers cultivate it?
STEM Netweavers
Julie Riesen
Associate Director, Oregon State University’s Center for Research on Lifelong STEM Learning
Julie is the Associate Director at Oregon State University’s STEM Research Center. She leads the Center’s research and programmatic portfolio on improving connections at the interface of society and science. She researches the transformative power of learning networks, organizational structures, professional growth, academic systems of reward and incentives, and partnerships. Julie leads the scholarship initiative for Advancing Research Impacts in Society and manages the Inclusive Excellence @OSU initiative aimed at transforming undergraduate education. She serves on the steering committees for the National Alliance for Broader Impacts (NABI) and Undergraduate Field Experiences Research Network (UFERN) and is graduate faculty in both Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences and Environmental Sciences.
Lou Woodley
Center Director, Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (CSCCE)
Lou is Director of the CSCCE – a research and training center which serves to study, champion, and train scientific community managers. Lou is a trained molecular biologist with research experience at Cambridge University, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, and the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona. Prior to her current role, Lou spent 5 years at AAAS, building and studying Trellis, an online communication and collaboration platform for scientists. Earlier in her career, Lou spent 5 years overseeing Nature Publishing Group’s community projects often working at the intersection of scientists and new technologies. She has also organized community-focused events of various formats and sizes, many of which have focused on science communication and the future of scholarly communications.
Ann Austin
Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education, Michigan State University
Ann is a Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education at Michigan State University, where she was selected as the Mildred B. Erickson Distinguished Chair in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education. She also is currently serving as a Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C.. Her research concerns faculty careers and professional development, organizational change in higher education, the academic workplace, teaching and learning in higher education, doctoral education, reform in science, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, and equity and inclusion in academe.
Emily Miller
Associate Vice President for Policy, Association of American Universities
Emily, as the Associate Vice President for Policy for AAU, has primary responsibilities for collaborating with member campuses on institutional policy efforts related to undergraduate and graduate education. She directs the AAU Undergrad STEM Education Initiative and the PhD education initiative. She also staffs AAU’s STEM Network and Association of Graduate Schools constituent groups and serves as liaison to the AAU Arts & Science Deans group. Emily was a research and curriculum specialist for the Association for Community College Trustees, an assistant director of career services at Tufts University, worked in alumni relations at Harvard Business School, and collaborated with the Association of Governing Boards.
Funding
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. (1524832).
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.