Texas Institute for Discovery Education in Science
Texas Institute for Discovery Education in Science (Acrobat (PDF) 292kB Oct6 17)The Texas Institute for Discovery Education in Science (TIDES) aims to catalyze, support, and showcase innovative, evidence-based undergraduate science education.
College of Natural Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, The
Established: 2013
Profile submitted by Sarah Eichhorn
Vision and Goals
Center/Program Structure
TIDES is run by an executive director with a faculty appointment. TIDES has approximately 10 staff and 35 faculty. TIDES is organized into three main branches: student programs, faculty instructional development and educational initiatives and assessment. The flagship program of TIDES is the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) which involves over 1,000 first year students in a multi--semester, substantive research experience.
Staff positions: Executive Director, Director of Student Programs, Director of Freshman Research Initiative, Assessment Coordinator, Teaching Evaluation Coordinator, Instructional Consultants, Business Manager, Events Coordinator
Faculty positions: Research Educators (teach, mentor and lead undergrad research)
Are there advantages of being structured this way?
Strong faculty team allows for large-scale undergraduate research experiences.
Are there particular challenges that result from this structure?
Funding
Combination of university funding, grants and gifts.
How has this funding structure influenced the undergraduate STEM education programming the center offers?
What are the specific advantages of having a center funded in this way?
What are the challenges?
Has this funding structure has changed over time?
Still fairly new.
Description of Programming
We work with the over 350 tenure-track faculty and over 400 non-tenure-track faculty in the College of Natural Sciences. We also serve the over 6,000 undergraduate students in the college.
Our programming consists of a large freshman research program, support for other undergraduate research experiences and study abroad, running an undergraduate research forum, offering faculty instructional development workshops and consultations, coordinating college teaching observations for promotion and tenure, leading major curriculum redesign efforts, and supporting assessment and evaluation of STEM undergraduate programming.
Successes and Impacts
Freshman research program with demonstrated impact on performance and persistence of students in the sciences:
http://digitalcommons.hsc.unt.edu/rad/RAD15/Education/6/
Evaluation and Assessment
How does your center demonstrate its value, both in terms of assessing its own programming and responding to external evaluation?