Growth Plan: Preface

Nearly 80% of STEM Ph.D.’s in the United States are awarded at only 100 doctoral research universities. [1]  This small number of universities populates the STEM faculties of several thousand undergraduate institutions in the United States. In fact, 80% of full-time STEM faculty received their Ph.D.’s at Carnegie Research Extensive universities.[2]  Thus graduate education is a powerful lever by which to improve STEM undergraduate learning across the nation.

On this strategic foundation, the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) began in January 2003 as an NSF Center for Learning and Teaching focusing on better preparing future faculty in teaching and learning. The initial CIRTL partners were Michigan State University, the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Wisconsin – Madison. The first goal was to discover whether the core ideas of CIRTL could move STEM graduate programs at major research universities toward preparing future faculty who are both superb researchers and excellent teachers.

After significant successes of the CIRTL learning communities at these universities, in 2006 the CIRTL partnership expanded to form an NSF-funded prototype CIRTL Network, comprising the University of Colorado at Boulder, Howard University, Michigan State University, Texas A&M University, Vanderbilt University and the University of Wisconsin – Madison. This intentionally diverse set of research universities was selected so as to test how the ideas of CIRTL would take root and grow in diverse campus cultures, and to explore if a cross-Network learning community would allow future faculty at every institution to benefit from the diversity of the Network universities.

Both the local and the cross-Network learning communities of the prototype CIRTL Network have thrived, and currently serve more than 1000 STEM future faculty each year. Now, to truly have the national impact on STEM undergraduate education envisioned at it’s beginning, CIRTL must include a large number of those 100 research universities. Thus in 2011 we seek to expand the CIRTL Network to 25 universities. This expansion builds on the lessons of the prototype Network, and at the same time represents the next sea change in the progression of CIRTL. The operational model of the CIRTL Network will need to change from a “family business” to a major national enterprise, while maintaining fidelity to the core ideas that have been successful.

This document, CIRTL for the Nation: A Growth Plan, is a draft plan for the operation of the expanded CIRTL Network. It is not intended to be a recruiting document (but see Table P1). The presumption is that if you are reading this, you are already interested in CIRTL and want to understand the current vision for the operations of the expanded CIRTL Network, including the resources and expectations associated with membership.

This is not a final plan. Rather, it is the beginning of learning how to grow to national scale in order to prepare a future faculty that will improve STEM undergraduate education throughout the United States. We hope you join us on this journey.
 

[2] Forrest Cataldi, E., Fahimi, M., and Bradburn, E.M. (2005). 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:04) Report on Faculty and Instructional Staff in Fall 2003 (NCES 2005–172). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved [3/3/11] from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch.