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The STEM Institutional Transformation Action Research (SITAR) Project

The STEM Institutional Transformation Action Research (SITAR) Project, housed in the Center for STEM Learning, aims to improve undergraduate STEM education by professionalizing educational practice through measurement, assessment, and cultural change. We focus on department-wide change to achieve more coherent, long lasting reforms. Our project uses a three-layer approach: (1) We work with groups of faculty through Departmental Action Teams (DATs) to create sustainable mechanisms to address educational issues in an ongoing fashion (bottom up); (2) We apply targeted approaches to individual departments to stimulate cultural change (middle out); and (3) We work with the administration and faculty senate to promote the use of evidence-based teaching practices through incentives and new infrastructure (top down). We support these three layers with infrastructure provided by the AAU and our collaborations with our Office of Informational Technology (OIT) and the Office of Institutional Research (IR) to develop and import technology for better utilizing already existing institutional student data.