Creative Scientific Inquiry Experiences
Ellene Tratras Contis, Eastern Michigan University
The Creative Scientific Inquiry Experience (CSIE) is a STEM-related program funded by the U.S. Department of Education that connects students with faculty and with community projects through an integrated science curriculum. We specialize in creating learning experiences for students in STEM fields through innovative courses and student events. Our courses are 1-2 credit hours, and faculty work with community partners to develop coursework that allows students to work on real-world problems.

Communities of practice for engaging faculty in STEM course reform
Laura Hahn, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
At large research-intensive universities, teaching STEM at scale has posed instructional challenges to faculty who are unaccustomed to addressing pedagogy in a collective, sustainable manner. At our institution, through strategic implementation of communities of practice, we are beginning to integrate the qualities of a strong, collaborative research culture into the context of teaching.

Enabling Faculty to Adopt Deliberative Democracy Pedagogy: a tool to broaden and engage
Gwen Shusterman, Portland State University
This project has been focused on catalyzing pedagogical innovation in introductory science courses. In particular, structures have been put in place to facilitate the implementation of the model of Deliberative Democracy Pedagogy (DDP). DDP is an active learning strategy, based on deliberative democratic models of citizen engagement in science policymaking. This integrative pedagogical approach, revises the delivery of conventional introductory science content around modules that engage students with current science policy controversies. Teaching teams of faculty and graduate students have attended summer pedagogical workshops, developed curricular modules, implemented the modules and participated in regular Communities of Practice meetings.

STEM Professional Academy to Reinvigorate the Culture of Teaching (SPARCT)
Laura Frost, Florida Gulf Coast University
A multidisciplinary STEM faculty professional development program called STEM Professional Academy to Reinvigorate the Culture of Teaching (SPARCT) is completing its second year at Florida Gulf Coast University. SPARCT includes a 36-hour summer STEM academy and a commitment to a faculty learning community during the subsequent academic year. We chronicled faculty development progress through video interviews with participants, student retention, interest, and confidence in SPARCT participant classes, and faculty feedback on programming.

Developing and implementing institution data dashboards to drive course transformation
Shanna Shaked, University of California-Los Angeles
We are working with institutional research folks, deans and other interested faculty to develop and implement institutional data dashboards that can be used to foster conversations and interventions to improve teaching.

Teaching Quality Framework Initiative
Noah Finkelstein, University of Colorado at Boulder
This effort provides framework for supporting and assessing teaching quality across all departments on a campus (i.e. a Teaching Quality Framework, or TQF). The TQF has two essential elements: (1) categories that define teaching as a scholarly activity, and (2) a change process for implementation. To assess teaching quality, we draw on three perspectives--faculty members, their students, and their peers--as sources of data. The TQF scholarly categories are held constant across departments, but each department contextualizes them according to the specifics of their discipline. The implementation strategy is grounded in theories of organizational change and is designed to lead to campus-wide adoption. This strategy is not a top-down mandate; it focuses on bringing together key faculty leaders and departments and providing them with a structure to co-create, test, and evaluate an assessment system in the context that makes the most sense to them.

An Education Research Professional Learning Community for STEM Faculty
Louis Nadelson, Utah State University
The STEM Education Research Scholars Group (SERSG) is a faculty community of practice (FCP) focused on increasing knowledge and experience in STEM education research. The participants applied to be part of the group (eight scholars per cohort) which was facilitated by an expert educational researcher, and committed to engage in both individual and group STEM education research projects. At the end of the fourth year, I conducted an exploratory study of the program outcomes and influences by surveying the 31 program alumni.

UA-AAU STEM Collaborative Learning Spaces Project
Lisa Elfring, The University of Arizona
The Collaborative Learning Spaces Project (CLSP), an extension of the UA AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Project, is a university-wide collaborative effort at the University of Arizona to develop classroom environments that are more suitable for active learning pedagogies than traditional lecture halls. Instructors and their teaching teams who are using these rooms receive training and participate in faculty learning communities (FLCs) to explore best practices and innovative ideas for use of these spaces.

Windows on the Inquiry Classroom
Christopher Bauer, University of New Hampshire-Main Campus
The project is a comprehensive documentation of an inquiry-based course, a college-level interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of heat, temperature, and energy (Fire and Ice). The door to this classroom is open for observations at any time for teachers, teacher educators, professional developers, researchers, and science learners. The entire course is available at the University of New Hampshire Scholars Repository: https://scholars.unh.edu/bauer. All 27 class sessions are captured in 10-minute video segments from four angles, including instructor and student teams. All course documents are also available: daily agenda, student team instructions and work products, and hands-on activity procedures. There are behind-the-curtain stories as well: instructor previews and debriefing for each class, graduate interns reviewing every class, student focus groups, and videos about course design process.

Systemic Transformation of Education through Evidence-based Reform (STEER)
Gerry Meisels, University of South Florida
STEER seeks to create a culture that reflects a strong balance between teaching and research, and values both. STEER promotes the adoption of evidence-based teaching practices in all science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses, especially in the large-enrollment gateway courses. To facilitate systemic change, the University of South Florida (USF) and Hillsborough Community College (HCC) are partnering to offer professional development for faculty and strengthening coordinated student advising, because the number of STEM community college students transferring to USF exceeds the number who began their studies at USF. STEER's comprehensive approach also addresses other factors that may influence students' academic experiences, such as graduate teaching assistant (GTA) training, student advising, course alignment, institutional policies related to teaching, and physical infrastructure such as classroom configuration. This effort is supported in part by the National Science Foundation, grant number DUE1525574.