Integration of Strategies that Support Undergraduate Education in STEM (ISSUES)

The Integration of Strategies that Support Undergraduate Education in STEM (ISSUES) project is a collective effort of disciplinary societies, educational associations, and other organizations with an interest in the improvement of undergraduate education in Science, Technology, Education, and Mathematics (STEM). Learn more about our partner societies and their activities.

Our mission is to build awareness and encourage adoption of best practices in collegiate STEM education and to foster national multi-disciplinary collaboration that supports campus-based communities and activities.

Some of the common elements of our collective agenda include:

• Build an undergraduate student body in STEM that reflects national demographics,
• Move undergraduate teaching so that it aligns with research on teaching and learning,
• Encourage the development of Discipline-­‐Based Educational Research (DBER) and assure that its fruits are integrated into the practice of teaching,
• Build inclusive communities of learning within individual STEM departments and combine this with departmental commitment to improving undergraduate instruction,
• Build opportunities for and awareness of robust and diverse professional pathways for STEM majors as well as an awareness of the essential nature and the applications of science, engineering, or mathematics among the students taking courses in these disciplines,
• Increase awareness within the research communities of the value of undergraduate education and need for serious attention to its challenges as part of one's professional identity.

We do this by sharing information about our activities, coordinating efforts and policy statements to increase their collective effectiveness, and leveraging our influence to help build interdisciplinary connections directed toward improving undergraduate STEM education within individual colleges and universities.

Our first activity was a planning workshop in January 2014, involving those responsible for undergraduate education initiatives at fifteen disciplinary societies in STEM fields and five educational associations—that identified critical issues of common concern. View the Workshop Report.

The second activity was a workshop linking local and national initiatives, with the goal of developing strategies to link faculty who attend professional development institutes and/or workshops hosted by professional societies to university-based STEM initiatives. View the ISSUES Final Report (Acrobat (PDF) 123kB Jul13 15).

Advisory Board

Linda Braddy, Mathematical Association of America
Cathy Manduca, Science Education Resource Center
David Bressoud, Macalester College
Mary Kirchhoff, American Chemical Society
Susan Musante, American Institute of Biological Sciences
Beth Cunningham, American Association of Physics Teachers
Bob Hilborn, American Association of Physics Teachers
Jack Hehn, American Institute of Physics
Ted Hodapp, American Physical Society
Kelly Mack, Project Kaleidoscope
Ashok Agrawal, American Society for Engineering Education
Amy Chang, American Society for Microbiology