Conference Report: 2025 Innovations in Two-Year College STEM Education (ITYC) Summit
Executive Summary
The highly successful 2025 Innovations in Two-Year College STEM Education (ITYC) Summit provided participants the opportunity to learn about the range of projects supported by NSF's ITYC program, increase their understanding of NSF's programs supporting two-year colleges (2YCs), discuss challenges and opportunities in leading projects at 2YCs, gain insights for developing future NSF proposals, and build connections across the ITYC community. This inaugural event was held July 29-31, 2025, in Alexandria, VA. The Summit brought together 108 participants representing 50 funded projects, including awardees/PIs, prospective PIs, NSF program officers, and other stakeholders.
The Summit engaged participants in multiple sessions designed to help them get to know each other, share expertise, discuss common challenges and solutions, and begin to form a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) focused around strengthening STEM education at 2YCs. The Summit included the following:
- Micro-poster sessions: Each ITYC PI/project team was asked to put together a micro-poster ahead of time used during the Summit to help spark conversations in two rounds of small-group table discussions.
- Project-based topical sessions: Throughout the Summit, participants had opportunities to interact with colleagues in a variety of sessions designed so they could work collaboratively and creatively to address topics related to their projects and/or grant management.
- Engagement with NSF Program Officers: NSF Program Officers were integrated throughout the program as speakers, participants, and observers. Individuals and teams were also able to schedule consultations with a Program Officer.
- Leadership, sustainability, and future possibilities: These three sessions were designed to help participants consider dynamic leadership approaches, explore models of sustaining their work long-term, and reflect on what aspects of their Summit experience they would want to share, how, and with whom.
- Post-summit webinars and new ITYC awardee program: A series of four webinars was held as a follow-on experience for Summit participants as well as other team members who were not able to attend the Summit. These webinars included an additional Micro-poster session and panel sessions focused on 2YC Grants Officers and Faculty: Working Together Effectively; Advice for New and Future PIs; and Designing and Implementing a Strong Evaluation Plan: Examples from ITYC Projects. Inspired by the Summit, a virtual program for new ITYC awardees was offered in 2026 and is described in a separate report (Zuber et al., 2026).
The success of the Summit was made clear by the participant responses to daily roadchecks and an end-of-workshop (EOW) evaluation. The satisfaction responses on each of these instruments were above 9 (on a scale from 1-10 where 10 is very satisfied). Participants strongly agreed that all the Summit goals were met and the event was well planned and facilitated. Likewise, webinar participants were asked to complete a short evaluation and they were very satisfied with all four webinars (rating of 9 or greater for each). Overall, participants identified the most valuable aspects of the Summit as learning about the range of projects under way, the event's interactive activities, exchanging ideas and solutions to common challenges, the direct access to NSF program officers, and the opportunity to build connections across the ITYC community.