Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Evolve!: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow. Harvard Business School Press, 2001.

Another lens would be what needs to happen on a campus, when there are people deeply committed to working on a particular problem, intent on shaping something new, because of their commitment to their students, their field, and their institution. Through this lens we can come to understand better the politics and processes of innovation and changewhat leaders need to know and be able to do to catalyze meaningful collaborations.

A final lens would be that afforded by research on learning, which clearly documents that people learn best when they are actively engaged, when they are situated in a social and supportive community, are given opportunity to reflect and build on prior knowledge, involved with addressing problems that are relevant to their lives and their workand when they become deeply engaged, understanding their role within a community of practice.

So, we offer this graphic as a catalyst for greater collaborations at the campus level, as well as within the national disciplinary societies and educational associations whose collective efforts make a difference.

What works: Leadership in Catalyzing Collaborations Toward STEM Reform

From the early 1990s to this time, numerous initiativessmall, medium, and large, discrete and comprehensivehave been directed toward transforming the undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning environment in America. Some of these have had major national and systemic impact on the quality and character of undergraduate STEM learning; some more modest and more localized impact and others have been isolated and ephemeral. Yet, for all these pioneering efforts, the work of transforming the undergraduate STEM learning environment has not yet reached a credible tipping point. The challenge remains to shape sustainably robust undergraduate natural science communities that attract students to STEM fields and motivate them to persist and succeedSTEM learning environments that serve the national interest now and into the future.

These recent decades have been a time of remarkable confluence of contextual influences on the undergraduate STEM learning environment. These influences are opportunity for meaningful change:

• Emerging research-based insights about how people learn confirm previous experience-based insights that what works is giving students ownership of their own learning: that it is when undergraduate learning in STEM fields is imagined as apprenticing, moving learner from novice to practitioner, when learning is contextual and relevant, giving students opportunity to gain the skills, capacities, and understandings needed to address contemporary challenges in the world beyond the campus.
• Increasing diversity of the undergraduate student population, coupled with the growing awareness that deep engagement in STEM learning is the means to prepare all students more effectively and creatively for their responsibilities as citizens of our global community and for the wide range of 21st century careers that call for skills and capacities gained through study in STEM fields as undergraduates, calls the question about the relevance of STEM learning for todays students, science, and society.
• Evolving scientific, engineering, and technological communities of practice are becoming dramatically different, as disciplinary boundaries are morphing and dissolving, technologies are more pervasive and essential tools for STEM research and communication, and S&T challenges and opportunities increasingly must be interpreted and addressed from a global perspective.

The challenge to make STEM learning a deeper and more meaningful learning experience for all undergraduates in our countrys classrooms is now even more pressing. Today, increasing the number and quality of STEM students and majors is essential to address a broader set of national priorities: from preparing the 21st century workforce to equipping all students to be leaders in a 21st century global community in which science and technology have increasing impact. This vision is the driver for the partnership between AAC&U and Project Kaleidoscope.

The AAC&U Partnership with PKAL

This is the time to be both visionary and realistic in your dreaming; the new spaces and structures being considered will serve the institution for many years. Remembering that the goal is to improve learning for students, think about questions such as the following:

• What works in the science and mathematics programs on our campus?
• What kind of spaces are needed for faculty to remain vital as scholars?
• Are there ways, intellectually and physically, that new connections can be made between the sciences, and among the sciences, the humanities, and the arts?
• How will the increasing national attention on developing a science-literate citizenry, transforming the K-12 community, bringing groups currently underrepresented in science, mathematics, and engineering affect our planning, our program, our space?

Such questions will be addressed in more depth during the process of defining the facilities program, after the decision has been made to move ahead with your project.

Answers to these questions will differ campus to campus, as individual institutions explore them in the context of their distinctive identity and mission. However, even if a major facilities project is not anticipated, these are the kinds of questions that must be asked as each academic community prepares to build and sustain strong undergraduate programs in science and mathematics in a changing, challenging world.

PKAL Volume III: Structures for Science, 1995.

Embracing the Right Questions: Planning Spaces for Science

PKAL Facilities Webinars

Our work convinced us of several things:


• The diagnoses of weaknesses in Americas education programs for science and mathematics are on the mark.
• The search for solutions would proceed more effectively if we could come to understand better the guiding principles that drive strong programs in science and mathematics in diverse institutional settings.
• Now is the time for action. There is a national consensus about the nature of the problem and the need to address it. All the partnersschools, colleges and universities, federal and state governments, professional associations, and private foundationsare moving from analysis to action.
  

Unless everyone with a stake in undergraduate science and mathematics makes tough decisions now about strategic prioritiesabout dollars, people, space, and timeeffective reform will not happen. Unless all partners work together, this nations educational shortcomings will not be addressed adequately. Effective reforms take money, to be sure. But more important is an environment for reform that encourages planning, fosters creativity, and rewards useful innovation. The environment for reform must be based on a driving vision of what works.

PKAL Volume I. What works: Building Natural Science Communities, 1992.

There has been much progress over the past twenty years to build and sustain such environments for reform, and PKAL leaders are pleased to have had a major role in moving the community from analysis to action. It is humbling, however, to note the work that still needs to be done, that old challenges remain and new opportunities have emerged. It is our hope that the PKAL/AAC&U partnership contributes in a meaningful way to our collective effort over the next decade. PKAL and AAC&U leaders understand clearly that:

The undergraduate years are critical for strengthening our nations science and mathematics capacity. It is in college where future scientists and college faculty are recruited and prepared for graduate study; where our nations elementary and secondary teachers, educators of Americas youth, are equipped; and where tomorrows leaders gain the background with which to make critical decisions in a world permeated by vital issues of science and technology. It is also at the undergraduate level where many able young-peopleparticularly minorities and womendecide to discontinue their study of science and mathematics. The result is a serious loss of talent to the service of the nation, a loss that we cannot afford if we are to remain competitive in a global economy.

PKAL Volume I. What works: Building Natural Science Communities, 1992.

• Jeanne L. Narum: Project Kaleidoscope and the Context for Reform
  
  
• Position Announcement: PKAL Director
  
  
• PKAL and AAC&U Announce a New Partnership ]]> http://www.pkal.org/news/#2472 Since 1992, Project Kaleidoscope has sponsored 36 workshops and colloquia on undergraduate facilities for science and mathematics, in which over 2000 people have participated. Based on the experience of these meetings and the experience of institutional teams whose planning has been informed by these meetings, we suggest facilities that work are those that:
  • clearly reflect the educational goals for the sciences and mathematics within an overall institutional framework, for the immediate and the long-term
  • support learning that is experiential, hands-on
  • recognize the increasingly social character of scientific research and teaching by facilitating productive interaction between and among students and faculty
  • acknowledge the role of serendipity in the doing of science, by including spaces for exploiting the unplanned, teachable moment
  • are so inviting, safe, and well equipped that they are used by students and faculty most hours of the day, seven days a week
  • anticipate the future by providing flexibility in space and infrastructure
  • respect and reflect the community that brought them into being
  • contribute to the humanity of the campus.

  The materials prepared for and emerging from these meetings are a treasury of resources for academic leaders thinking about new and/or renovated spaces for science. Some visions of the future are presented in these essays, adapted from materials in the PKAL archive.

  • Announcement of a pilot PKAL Series of Facilities Webinars
    
    
  • Essays on the STEM Facility of the Future (adapted from materials in the PKAL archive)

  ]]> http://www.pkal.org/news/#2471 Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) has entered into two significant partnerships over the past several months, with the: Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U); and Science Education Resource Center (SERC) hosted at Carleton College. The value of partnerships and collaborations as catalysts for meaningful change has been recognized from the earliest days of PKAL. We must collaborate; the time is too short and the task too great to do otherwise, was the challenge issued by the then Chairman of the House Science Committee at the conclusion of PKALs 1st National Colloquium, in 1991.

  Lessons learned about the critical role of such partnerships in advancing individual, regional and national efforts to shape and sustain robust undergraduate STEM learning environments from PKALs current NSF-supported Pedagogies of Engagement initiative are reflected in the partnerships with AAC&U and SERC.
  
  What works in such partnerships is when there is:

  • A shared vision of a more desired future and of the urgency of the task to realize that future
  • Shared leadership on each side of the partnership visibly supporting and championing meaningful change initiatives
  • Ready access to resources (people, ideas, funds, materials, communities, and networks) that have documented success in advancing meaningful change initiatives adapting, implementing, and assessing new curricular and pedagogical approaches in the undergraduate STEM context
  • A plan of action that reflects the shared vision, engages the shared leadership, and ensures that resources are easily accessible to those within the partnership in ways that catalyze efforts at the campus level to adapt, implement, and assess curricular and pedagogical approaches that serve to prepare undergraduates to be contributing citizens and members of the 21st century workforce, no matter their background or career aspiration.
    • The AAC&U Partnership with PKAL
    • SERC/PKAL Partnership
    ]]> http://www.pkal.org/news/#2470 With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Project Kaleidoscope is undertaking a major initiative fostering and stimulating wider understanding and implementation of promising practices with documented impact on strengthening undergraduate STEM learning.

    This Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) initiative spotlights what is known, from research and practice, about:

    • how individual undergraduate faculty in mathematics, the various fields of science and engineering, can transform individual courses and classrooms and laboratories toward the goal of actively engaging students in their own learning
    • how leaders of departments and programs in these fields can shape learning experiences through which the students for whom they are responsible are introduced to and socialized into the natural science community on their campus
    • how academic deans and other institutional leaders can support the efforts of individual faculty, programs, and departments, helping to shape the intellectual, social, financial, and physical infrastructures essential for undergraduate natural science communities to flourish on their campus.

    A Guide to Engaging Learners: Engaged Learning is being developed as a major resource for this NSF-funded PKAL initiative. It is designed as a road-map for those exploring why, who, what, where, and how to implement change at the local level. We present here questions to ask about how to engage learning in formal and informal learning environments and how to support efforts of faculty as individuals and members of departments and programs working toward a vision of engaged learners. Further questions addressed are about collective actions needed at the institutional level to support, nurture, and sustain these efforts.

    Threaded throughout the Guide are insights that reinforce how efforts of individual and institutional agents of change serve the larger national interest, preparing graduates who are instrumental as members of the 21st century workforce and as responsible citizens in our 21st century democracy in shaping the future of our global community.

    • Engaging Learners: Engaged Learning - Part I
    ]]> http://www.pkal.org/news/#2469 A common barrier to institutional transformation is the difficulty of assembling a leadership team taking responsibility for understanding what needs to be accomplished and for making certain that the community works creatively, efficiently and effectively toward a common vision. The emerging PKAL Planning Process, in many ways, mirrors the pedagogical processes by which faculty shape collaborating, problem-solving teams of undergraduates in classrooms and/or research labs. For example, as described in an HHMI publication, leading and managing a research lab team requires:
    • Choicepeople who want to be there, to have appropriate responsibilities, be involved in discussions about strategies and be listened to.
    • Competencepeople who have the skills to do the work that is expected of them.
    • Purposepeople who understand the importance of their role in the enterprise.
    • Recognitionpeople who are given feedback (continuous), have their work recognized and celebrated.
    • Comfortpeople who enjoy the task and look forward to continuing engagement with colleagues.
    • Progresspeople who know that progress is being made (small goals met) against an agreed upon schedule and process.
    • Enthusiasmpeople who are able to communicate their enthusiasm and vision for the work that is being done beyond the team.
    Adapted from: Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), 2006.

    Such requirements, and some practical advice, are also addressed in the PKAL archive of resources on planning spaces for undergraduate STEM communities Guidelines for Collaboration. This advice will inform efforts of academic planners, no matter the problem, challenge or opportunity they are addressing.

    • Lessons Learned II: Common Problems, Challenges, and Opportunities Facing STEM Leaders
    ]]> http://www.pkal.org/news/#2468 Leadership Initiative (LI) (2004 2007) was that there is a process that works in undertaking institutional transformation. Distilled in the PKAL Planning Process, what works, is when the process:
    • reflects contemporary pedagogical approaches tackling the work of transforming undergraduate STEM with approaches and tools of STEM professionals
    • centers on student learning serving a vision that all 21st century undergraduates acquire deep understandings about contemporary scientific and technological issues and gain the skills, capacities, and willingness to use those understandings in addressing contemporary issues
    • develops leaders and an institutional culture of leadership generating a visible and evolving cadre of leaders shaping an institutional vision and achieving a culture in which that vision can be realized
    • focuses on what works building a collaborative, problem-solving community taking leadership responsibility over the long-term.
    Embedded in all of these is the value of questioning and reflecting. Experiences from the PKAL LI community will be posted in the coming year; we begin with questions about shaping an interdisciplinary learning environment for STEM students and on the role of provosts in nurturing a research-rich STEM learning community.
    • Lessons Learned About Leadership in STEM Transformation
    ]]> http://www.pkal.org/news/#2467 http://www.pkal.org/alerts#80 http://www.pkal.org/alerts#80 http://www.pkal.org/alerts#80 http://www.pkal.org/alerts#80 http://www.pkal.org/alerts#80