Make Change Happen

This video, created by The College of William and Mary, showcases the efforts of the project to create change by empowering 2YC faculty as Change Agents.
One key aspect of the Faculty as Change Agents project has been an exploration of how to actually make and sustain change in the context of two-year colleges. The variety of administrative structures, multiple campuses, and typically smaller number of full-time faculty at 2YCs make them different in kind than their four-year counterparts where most institutional change research has been done. The work of the Change Agent teams contributes to the knowledge base of ways to create change at these institutions.

Developing as a Leader ยป
Learn more about developing skills to lead in place as a faculty member.

Cross-Cutting Lessons Learned

All of the Change Agent teams were tasked with addressing all three strands of the project: broadening participation in geoscience and STEM, facilitating students' professional pathways, and supporting the academic success of all students. Since each team was also trying to address the particular challenges of their own context, there was more or less emphasis on particular strands which led to a variety of activities and outcomes. As a capstone activity for their work, Change Agents from cohorts 1 and 2 spent time synthesizing their experiences and lessons learned around 6 key issues: supporting the academic success of all students, facilitating students' career pathways, facilitating 2YC-4YCU transfer, increasing inclusion and diversity, building a regional network, and making and sustaining change in the 2YC context. These pages provide guidance and advice in these areas drawn directly from the experience of the teams.

Supporting the Academic Success of All StudentsFacilitating Students' Professional PathwaysFacilitating 2YC-4YCU TransferIncreasing Diversity and InclusionBuilding a Regional NetworkMaking and Sustaining Change

About these pages

At the 2019 culminating workshop, working groups of Change Agents from cohorts 1 and 2 drew upon each other's program descriptions to describe common themes that came up in the work of the whole group. The process involved several rounds of small group work as well as whole group discussion and feedback. Following the workshop, the information aggregated by the working groups was organized and edited by John McDaris (SERC-Carleton College) and reviewed by project leaderships before going back to the Change Agents for final approval. Subsequently, examples from cohort 3 have been added to the synthesis pages to showcase their experiences with these same issues.

Models for Change

Activities of the Change Agent Teams

The Change Agent Teams in Cohorts 1 and 2 documented their goals, activities, and outcomes over the course of the project. These project descriptions are a rich source of ideas and guidance for others wishing to address similar goals, needs, and opportunities in their own contexts.

Cohort 1: Northern CaliforniaCohort 1: Southern California 1Cohort 2: Southern California 2Cohort 1: Southern California 3Cohort 1: FloridaCohort 1: IllinoisCohort 2: MassachusettsCohort 2: MichiganCohort 1: New YorkCohort 1: North CarolinaCohort 1: Oregon: PortlandCohort 1: Oregon: Willamette ValleyCohort 1: TexasCohort 1: VirginiaCohort 2: Washington D.C. Metro AreaCohort 2: Western WashingtonCohort 1: Wisconsin

The Cohort 3 Change Agent Teams also documented their work. These teams had a narrower campus-level focus and a 1-year timeframe so their program models are presented differently from those of Cohorts 1 and 2. 12 Cohort 3 teams took part in the 2021 Leadership extension (marked with an *).

Anne Arundel Community College*Central New Mexico Community CollegeCentralia College*Clark College*Delgado Community College*El Paso Community College*Fletcher Technical Community College*Georgia State University - Perimeter CollegeHouston Community College SystemLane Community College*Leeward Community College*Monroe Community College*San Diego Mesa College*Santiago Canyon College*Suffolk County Community College*Yakima Valley College

NSF-Funded GeoPaths Program Profiles

Several recipients of grant funding from the NSF IUSE: GeoPaths program allowed SAGE 2YC to post a profile of their goals and activities. All of the programs that are profiled included a strong component supporting 2YC-4YCU transfer and the profiles serve as models for the broader community of different approaches to the issues.

2YCs as the Context for Institutional Change

Originally written for the SAGE Musings Blog, these articles by Pamela Eddy of The College of William & Mary address questions of how 2YCs fit into the larger conversations about institutional change and how faculty at 2YCs can be active partners and leaders in that change.

SAGE Musings: Institutional Change at Two-Year CollegesSAGE Musings: Seeing the World Through Multiple FramesSAGE Musings: Leading in Place

 

Other Resources

Pathways to Institutional Change - The Supporting STEM Success in a Liberal Arts Context website grew out of a collaboration between institutions which all received significant funding through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). This collaboration generated a synthesis of lessons that these "capstone" institutions have learned over the course of many years working on efforts to strengthen the undergraduate experiences in science and mathematics for all of their students. One axis of this work revolved around lessons specifically about how to successfully make change happen at the institutional level.

InTeGrate: Make Change Happen - In the process of implementing InTeGrate materials in their courses and programs, the 16 InTeGrate Program Models learned lessons about institutional change across a variety of contexts. This suite of pages synthesizes the experiences of the teams and draws together common threads from their work.

Making Change Happen at your Institution: How to Overcome Practical Challenges and Build Momentum - This webinar was provided to help faculty and administrators explore how to launch and sustain institutional and curricular change. Judith Ramaley, President Emerita at Winona State University and President Emerita and Distinguished Professor of Public Service at Portland State University, facilitated the webinar and addressed aspects including understanding how your institution works, strategies for sustaining change over the long term, and how to generate support for change in order to expand your efforts.