Effective Personnel are Important

Having the right people in the right roles makes a dramatic difference in what a center is able to accomplish. It is important to clarify the skill sets needed for the center to achieve the goals set out in its vision and mission and then find the right combination of individuals with the ability to apply those skills to enhance undergraduate teaching and learning experiences. Appropriate organizational structures can facilitate the application of a center's human resources thus improving the efficiency of center work. Effective personnel are able to promote the work of the center across various departmental boundaries enhancing the relevance of the center to potential stakeholders. For a center to make the most of it's human resources sufficient funding and data (at both the course and institutional level) must be available to inform programming.

Faculty role

Faculty serve critical mission in many centers, taking on roles across a spectrum of engagement ranging from advocacy to full integration into the center. Thus attention needs to be given to recruiting, incentivizing, and rewarding faculty as well as transparently defining expectations for their role. Less active roles include an association with the center that can foster advocacy as well as provide the opportunity to expand their role. A more active level may include formal association with privilege to carry out research or grant activities. A fully-engaged faculty may be partially or totally housed within the center, with the faculty committed to carrying out the center's mission. Many centers include several levels of engagement to accommodate a variety of participation capacities. The availability of ways to be more involved can also encourage deeper participation as faculty expertise and interest develops. The benefits and costs of such levels of engagement should be evaluated within the institutional context and the relevant rewards to individual faculty an ongoing, dynamic process. Avoid rewarding structures that take unfair advantage of faculty volunteers or create unsustainable expectations. Centers have the voice (and responsibility) to advocate to administration for fair compensation of effort.

Faculty Fellows

Faculty apply to be fellows, and in some cases may go through a competitive selection process and/or may be vetted to meet minimal criteria. Fellows have access to resources of the center (seed grants, travel, etc).

DBER Faculty

Discipline-based education research faculty, embedded within a STEM department that carry out educational research, are associated with centers in multiple ways as their research is synergistic with the mission of the center.

Split Appointments

Split DBER faculty appointments, where the split is with tenure home department, provides a mechanism for departmental and institutional change as well as expanding the research mission of the department. As the STEM center is not a tenure home, this offers the opportunity to develop a partnership with the tenure home which has multiple advantages including facilitating the norms of DBER scholarship as well as fostering opportunities for proposal and project development.

Staff Role

The director of the center relies on key staff to complement their own skills as well as carry out the mission and vision of the center. Having well-trained personnel in the right positions is critical to facilitate effective collaborations that move the center's work forward. For example, center staff may work closely with university libraries (and/or the office of digital learning initiatives) to develop digital pedagogy, with faculty implementing and scaling discipline based education research (DBER) innovations, with the office of institutional research to gain necessary insight into the teaching and learning of 1st and 2nd year gateway STEM courses, as well as diverse university committees to promote inclusive teaching practices and the use of technology.

Examples of important staff attributes

• Credibility in STEM (e.g. faculty member in STEM department)
• Broker across departments
• Strengthen collaborations to enhance the spaces the center works in
• Draw on existing faculty to communicate mission to stakeholders
• Staff knowledge of stakeholders
• Use of and application of technology to promote teaching and learning
• Link faculty efforts on new and existing initiatives to strengthen impact

Leverage Human Resources to Build Center Capacity

This effort involves both attracting the right people and also continuously developing the skills of those already on board. Often times, at least initially, many duties fall on the shoulders of the center Director, who may also be a faculty member with responsibilities beyond the center. While this can be a workable solution in the short run, it can also limit growth in the long term. If one person is responsible for all the administrative support for the center - website, publicity, accounting, outreach, etc. - there isn't capacity to explore new opportunities. It is also the case that the person best suited to lead the center may not have strong skills in these other areas.

Centers have options for promoting their capacity to do more.

• Create an advisory board made up of the stakeholders of the center to distribute some of the work load.
• Explore faculty joint appointments to increase the center's capacity via leveraged resources. Dedicated staff can take time to truly understand center mission and activities, even if they also have other responsibilities.
• Provide training and development for staff and volunteers that enables them to take on more or different aspects of the work as they gain new skills.

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