Cultural Change

The Gateway Science Workshop (GSW) is a peer-led program designed to improve performance and retention of students in introductory STEM gateway courses at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University.

Michigan State University is instituting reform of the gateway courses in biology, physics, and chemistry with an ultimate goal to design and implementation of a set of coherent gateway courses where students learn how to engage with the core ideas of the discipline in scientifically plausible ways.

The Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL) at Indiana University Bloomington provides leadership and expertise to enable innovation in curricula, implementation of powerful technologies and pedagogies in and beyond the classroom, and student engagement with learning resources and materials to promote critical analytic and research skills.

Emory University’s Institute for Quantitative Theory and Methods (QuanTM) new and innovative curriculum prepares students for variety of professional careers and graduate school with statistical training, fellowships, a faculty skill-building leave program, and an annual speaker series and workshops.

As a response to the findings of an institutional assessment, Duke university has a three-pronged, overlapping approach to enhancing the success of incoming Duke students who have traditionally struggled the most in the STEM curriculum.

The purpose of the Graduate Research and Teaching Fellows Program at Cornell University is to provide graduate students considering academic positions in higher education with advanced teaching and professional development opportunities to become excellent teachers.

Cornell University is undertaking campus-wide and discipline-specific initiatives to provide graduate students and postdoctoral scholars with practical experience in planning for, stimulating, and assessing undergraduate learning with lunchtime workshops and targeted events on developing assessment skills.

Cornell University is working to restructure the core course sequences for engineering and physics majors. The primary focus of this initiative is to transition from traditional lecture to more deliberate pedagogical approaches to enhance student learning and retention.

Cornell University has initiated institution-wide changes to the core undergraduate biology curriculum to transition from traditional lecture based instruction to incorporation of active learning techniques. The first phase of this five-year transition will focus on four large introductory courses.

Brown University focuses on improving the mathematical competency among STEM majors by seeking to introduce evidence-based, high impact practices in first and second year STEM courses. The goal, reducing attrition from science and improving students’ identification with science as a career.