Workshop 2014: Creating a National Network of STEM Education Centers

This workshop has already happened

We welcome participants from the Transforming Institutions Conference, STEM education center directors, and directors of centers for teaching and learning that deeply engage in STEM education transformation. At this working meeting, we anticipate having 60 participants representing STEM education centers.

Participants will:

  1. Design a full national conference dedicated to STEM education centers (for 2015)
  2. Spend time organizing a framework for a possible national network, and
  3. Define some of the research questions around STEM education centers.


In the larger follow-on national conference that we will be designing, we envision having teams from centers engage in working sessions around critical issues for centers (e.g. sustainable funding, getting buy-in from faculty and administrators, and improving student learning) and dedicated special interest groups around main themes of our centers (e.g. undergraduate education, teacher preparation and K-12 schools, and broader impacts).

At the working meeting, we will decide who from the broader STEM education reform agenda to invite to the national conference, including administrators, funders, and policy makers.

At the October gathering and the subsequent national conference we will be:

  • identifying the value and mechanisms for creating a national network,
  • identifying and externalizing the outcomes of individual centers, as well as the network itself,
  • linking with other national networks (e.g. AAU, APLU/SMTI, etc.),
  • identifying how, collectively, we can address a variety of national challenges and calls for educational transformation (e.g. through developing collaborative research agendas). However, these are just our initial ideas and it will be the community that shapes whether and how we move forward.

The day will begin at 8:00 am on Oct 25, 2014 and end by 3:00 pm at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown. The meeting includes breakfast and lunch.

Workshop Agenda

Homework

  1. Join our email list by emailing Kacy Redd at kredd at aplu.org.
  2. If your center has not already done so, complete the center profile survey.

Background on 2013 meeting

During the summer of 2013, we invited STEM Education Centers to join the national discussion and fill out a survey. In September a workshop was held in St. Louis to share a new understanding of the national landscape of STEM Education Centers. We now have more than 50 profiles of centers and programs on this website; please visit our center profiles page. You can read about that meeting here: STEM Education Center Workshop 2013 report. The meeting was funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

2014 Workshop Conveners

Noah Finkelstein (Co-Chair), University of Colorado at Boulder
Kacy Redd (Co-Chair), Association of Public and Land-grant Universities

2014 Planning Committee Members

Steven Case, University of Kansas
Stan Deetz, University of Colorado at Boulder
Bruce Goldstein, University of Colorado at Boulder
Laird Kramer, Florida International University
Cailin Huyck Orr, SERC at Carleton College
Martin Storksdieck, Oregon State University
Gabriela Weaver, University of Massachusetts Amherst

This meeting is being organized by a planning committee convened by APLU ( This site may be offline. ) .


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