Initial Publication Date: September 15, 2016

Align Budget to Needs and Purposes

Communicating Vision and Mission »Identifying the role of funding will assist in a stable and healthy funding structure for campus.

Infrastructure and Capacity Building to Address University Priorities

Functions of the center that fall under this category include implementing new pedagogy, assisting with assessment, K-12 outreach, and building capacity to achieve true institutional mission and goals. Recognizing these priorities is key to securing champions of the center at the institution.

Operations of a Center

The funding model of the center has a significant impact on the nature of the operations budget for a center. Those Centers that are primarily grant funded must be creative in their search for support of routine operation functions. Operations includes office administration support, grant support, budget development, supplies, copying, computers, etc. The operations budget is often a financial burden that restricts programming options. Also, often these clerical functions fall to the director, which is not a good use of their skills or time. A recognized strong practice is to negotiate an agreement with the institution to have some fraction of the center's operating costs to be covered internally by one or more units.

Programming

A strong practice for (internal and external) funding of programmatic actives is to promote and build significant partnerships to strengthen proposals and to broaden impact.

Institute for STEM and Diversity Initiatives and the Center for Teaching and Learning at Boise State University collaborate with each other and academic departments to improve faculty practice in effective STEM teaching. Both centers recently participated in a workshop on effective ways for collaborations to occur between STEM Education Centers and Centers for Teaching and Learning, which resulted in the report Collaborating at the Centers.
The Center for Engineering, Science, and Mathematics Education (CESAME) at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo has focused its efforts on the recruitment, preparation, and retention of K-12 STEM teachers. CESAME coordinates the STEM Teacher and Researcher (STAR) Program on behalf of the CSU system. STAR provides paid summer research experiences at national laboratories (e.g., NASA, NOAA, DOE, DOD) along with professional development emphasizing the development of "teacher-researcher" identity. Additional information is available at https://star-web.csm.calpoly.edu/.

Producing and Consuming Scholarly Research

Meeting this charge for scholarship may be critical, particularly at researched focused universities. A focus on research contributes to the gravitas of the center, and meets the time-honored goals of the university of advancing knowledge. This also firmly establishes the center in the midst of the core work of faculty. A strong practice for advancing scholarship is establish such as part of the center mission and establish time and money to advance these efforts.