IV. The National Conversation


CIRTL will become a focal point in the national conversation about STEM professional development in teaching and learning. Following the successful NISE model (Mundry, Britton, Raizen, & Loucks-Horsley, 2000), we will host annual CIRTL Forums to address central issues in the development of STEM teaching and learning. We anticipate that the first CIRTL Forum in Fall 2003, modeled after the 1998 NISE Forum in Graduate Education (www.wcer.wisc.edu/gradedforum), will produce a national status report on present STEM graduate-through-faculty teaching and learning development programs. We will also carry the national conversation to STEM disciplinary meetings, for which we have built-in capacity in the diverse set of STEM faculty on the CIRTL team. And we will contribute to the broader ongoing conversations regarding graduate education being led by the Carnegie Foundation (Cambridge, 2002), the Council of Graduate Schools, the American Association for Higher Education, the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and various disciplinary associations.

We are enthusiastic about developing distance learning programs that will provide in-service professional development beyond the CIRTL Network. We will also disseminate CIRTL products via the Web, building on our experience with the Innovations in STEM Education Web site. The fundamental research work will be presented at conferences and in journals and books.

We will create a CIRTL Fellows program modeled on the NISE Fellows program. These Fellows will bring national expertise and diverse perspectives to CIRTL and make scholarly contributions that will strengthen the CIRTL program. Equally important, the CIRTL Fellows will create a strong national network for both dissemination and ongoing collaboration.