Workshop Goals

Towards a National Network of University-based STEM Education Centers, St. Louis, MO,September 15-16, 2013

Goals: To engage STEM Education Centers in a discussion about

• Sharing available evidence and best practices about the impacts of centers on STEM undergraduate teaching and learning, including the mechanisms of their impact (directly with undergraduate students, or indirectly with the informal or K-12 communities, graduate students or faculty, or research on teaching and learning STEM disciplines).
• Synergies among centers and STEM learning goals that may emerge by working with other types of centers.
• The preliminary classification scheme developed from results of the survey (summer 2013). Such a classification scheme may be useful for centers to self-identify, and for centers or others (e.g., foundations) to connect with centers having similar interests.
• Initiating planning for enhanced communication among the larger group of centers nation wide, for example, a larger conference of STEM Education Centers to highlight how they conduct their work on campus vis-à-vis other campus structures, and the value these organizations might have in advancing national imperatives to improve science and mathematics education.