III. The CIRTL Scope of Work


The first objective of CIRTL is to create the CIRTL Professional Development Program in Teaching and Learning for STEM graduates-through-faculty, based on the principle of teaching-as-research and integrated within a learning community. We will build an interdisciplinary program that spans the educational responsibilities of current and future STEM faculty. We will create, implement, and evaluate activities in the following five areas, and integrate them within a learning community:
1. Curricula providing a foundation for teaching-as-research and improved classroom practice;
2. Informal education;
3. Instructional materials development in a K-12 preservice teacher environment;
4. Internships in varied learning environments; and
5. Teaching and learning with diverse student audiences.

Experts from UW, MSU, and PSU will guide the work, informed by a review of national graduate-through-faculty professional development programs. We will use UW as a laboratory for the initial implementation and evaluation of the activities and the learning community. The key deliverables will be tools and strategies for successful implementation, such as activity designs, instructional materials, evaluated assessments, training protocols, and videos. These products will enable adaptation of CIRTL successes at other research universities.
Preparing the national STEM faculty requires a national solution. The second objective of CIRTL is to prototype a national implementation of the CIRTL Professional Development Program. Recognizing that research universities differ greatly, we will develop a network of 10 research universities that span these differences. We will then develop, implement, and evaluate methods for adapting the CIRTL Professional Development Program to these diverse environments. The key deliverables will be adoption of the program at 10% of the major graduate institutions in the U.S. and a research-based blueprint for expansion to a nationwide implementation.



III.a. The CIRTL Professional Development Program in Teaching and Learning

This proposal is founded on a recognition of the strategic importance of graduate students at research universities as the STEM faculty of tomorrow. Thus our discussion of the CIRTL Professional Development Program in Teaching and Learning is cast in the context of graduate student participation in courses that build foundation knowledge, seminars as frameworks for experiential learning, and internships for practical experience, each within semester/quarter units. Nonetheless, all aspects of the program will be equally effective for post-doctoral researchers. Furthermore, most are appropriate for faculty at all career stages. Thus we also plan versions in short, intensive workshop modes. These might be offered during summers, or as part of teaching assistant training programs. We anticipate that these will be attractive to faculty, and will also increase the number of graduate student and post-doctoral participants.

Clearly, STEM graduate students (and post-docs and faculty) are not a homogeneous population in their commitment to teaching and learning, time available for professional development, and career stage. Thus the program will permit a wide range in degree of participation. For the most committed students, CIRTL will provide a rich opportunity for a minor or certificate program in STEM education. Minor/certificate students would design an individualized plan of activities from the CIRTL program under the guidance of a mentoring committee, and do an internship. We anticipate that such students will also form deep commitments to the CIRTL Learning Community. While requiring a greater investment of time, we note that as a minor this route need not be an overload. Other students may enroll in only one CIRTL activity, for example by participating in the Informal Education program to develop a background for outreach to minority communities. Yet others may only find time for a summer workshop. In the UW laboratory we envision an implementation that permits all of these entry points, thereby maximizing the number of graduates-through-faculty served. This approach also provides us with a research base for exploring the impact of the CIRTL Professional Development Program as a function of participation.

A key goal of CIRTL is to identify effective incentives for graduate-through-faculty professional development in teaching and learning. Broadly speaking, we are responding to a demand for better preparation for future faculty positions (see sections II.b and V). Thus we consider it essential that participation in CIRTL programs be formally recognized, whether it be through a minor or certificate program, course credit, publication, or presentation at a professional meeting. It is this formal recognition that will be most significant in obtaining faculty positions. The current research funding environment also provides strong incentives for graduate-through-faculty participation in CIRTL. STEM funding agencies are requesting effective educational components to research programs, providing incentive to both current and future STEM researchers to develop products and capacity in all forms of education. We will build on this incentive in several CIRTL programs, as described next. Finally, incentive will be provided by leading STEM faculty who endorse new views of graduate training. CIRTL will develop such core faculties (see section V) to both found the Learning Community and proactively promote the value of development in teaching and learning.

The components of the CIRTL Professional Development Program in Teaching and Learning are:


III.a.i. Curriculum for Teaching-as-Research and Improved Classroom Practice

The national investment in developing best practices for STEM higher education has yielded a rich array of methods for STEM teaching and learning, such as collaborative learning techniques and innovative approaches to assessment. Most research universities now provide opportunities for graduates-through-faculty to learn these teaching practices. These important courses are aligned with CIRTL’s goal of improved practice in STEM higher education classrooms and will be incorporated within the CIRTL program. However, they typically do not address several key issues for future STEM faculty or provide students with the skills needed for ongoing practitioner-based improvement of STEM higher education. The CIRTL Professional Development Program will offer three key courses: (a) Teaching as Research: The Classroom as a Laboratory; (b) Technology-Enhanced Learning: Teaching with Technology; and (c) Teaching and Learning with Diverse Student Audiences.

Teaching as Research: The Classroom as a Laboratory. STEM graduate students will come to CIRTL with an aptitude for experimental thinking and the scientific way of knowing. At the same time, each will come with different technical skills (e.g., in mathematics and statistics) and experimental methods. For these students to apply research methods to their teaching, they will need to broaden their skills and their ways of knowing (e.g., Coppola & Jacobs 2002). This course will provide a solid foundation of learning theory and research design for teaching-as-research. Specifically, students will (a) review the ways students learn; (b) review recent trends and best practices in curriculum development, including content, method, assessment, and learning environment; (c) design research questions about learning outcomes; (d) learn research designs and experimental methods, with an emphasis on existing instruments and procedures; (e) learn analysis methods, including basic statistical tools; (f) design and implement teaching-as-research capstone projects; and (g) explore issues related to the scholarship of teaching and learning within disciplines. The course development will be led by Conrad and Courter.

Technology-Enhanced Learning: Teaching with Technology. The modalities of teaching and learning are changing rapidly. The idea of the scheduled classroom as the primary learning space and time is being challenged by the convergence of computer and communications technology. Future faculty will increasingly use technology to achieve their learning objectives. In this course, students will learn how to use technology to design integrated conventional and technology-based learning environments that best meet their goals. They will study the following elements in technology-based education: (a) design of learning outcomes; (b) components of curriculum; (c) design of in-class and out-of-class approaches to presenting new information, inquiry activities, problem solving, student-teacher communication, and student-student collaboration; (d) online assessment techniques; (e) evaluation techniques for technology-enhanced learning; (f) the “Digital Divide” and how to use technology effectively for diverse student audiences; and (g) design and implementation of teaching-as-research capstone projects. The course development will be led by Moses, drawing on the research of the NISE College Level One Institute on Technology in Learning.

Teaching and Learning with Diverse Student Audiences. Research shows the pivotal impact of classroom experiences on equitable student achievement and persistence in STEM (Cabrera, Colbeck, & Terenzini, 2001; Colbeck, Cabrera & Terenzini, 2001; Tinto, 1997). This course will prepare students to engage in effective teaching practices for diverse student audiences. Students will (a) become familiar with the profile of women and minorities in sciences and engineering; (b) study the connection between learning styles and teaching practices; (c) learn about the effect of classroom climate on student outcomes; (d) review teaching practices that engage students while minimizing ethnic- and gender-based conflicts; (e) assess the impact of teaching practices on diverse students; and (f) become familiar with collaborative learning as a tool for engaging all students in active learning. The course development will be led by Burstyn and Cabrera, building on the outcomes of our Teaching and Learning with Diverse Student Audiences line of work (section III.a.v).

All of these courses will be developed and evaluated as models of teaching-as-research within a learning community. Thus we will form teams of education and STEM faculty, post-docs, and graduate students (employed as project assistants [PAs]) to create, implement, and evaluate the courses.

We plan to offer these courses not only in the classroom but also as distance learning courses. This effort will yield several benefits. First, distance learning will offer a mechanism for immediate national dissemination of these CIRTL products. Second, STEM graduate students (employed as PAs) will be integrally involved in the transformation of the courses to distance learning, thus acquiring valuable skills in this rapidly advancing area of higher education delivery. Finally, this pilot effort will give a team of STEM graduates-through-faculty the opportunity to engage in a teaching-as-research design project to evaluate the comparative impact of learning at a distance and traditional classroom courses.
(Curriculum Development Team Leaders: Conrad, Educational Administration; Courter, Engineering Learning Center; Moses, Engineering Physics)


III.a.ii. Informal Education

The importance of STEM informal education to the development of a scientifically literate nation cannot be overestimated. Informal education takes place in the information channels that become the principal avenues for learning about science once formal schooling is completed—mass media, the World Wide Web, museums, public talks. Scientists who effectively bridge the gap between academic and public communication have major impacts on STEM literacy and recruitment into STEM careers. This has been nationally recognized, and informal education has become central to the missions of funding agencies, including NSF. Increasingly, STEM research grants have informal education components. Evidently most future STEM faculty members will engage in informal education throughout their careers.
Few research universities prepare STEM graduates-through-faculty for this national challenge. Yet the technical nature of science, the specialized languages it requires, and the general lack of training in effective communication place science at a continuing disadvantage in public discourse. The CIRTL Informal Education program will build the skills needed to enhance public understanding of what STEM researchers are doing, why they are doing it, and what they are learning.

We propose a teaching-as-research design for experiential learning in informal education. We expect that participants will be actively engaged in STEM research. The core objective of this program is for participants to conceive, create, implement, and evaluate an informal education product related to that research. Such products may range from public talks and Web pages to press releases and Java applets.
Each student will be a member of a seminar group of 10–15 participants taught by two faculty members, one in STEM and one in communications (initially, Ackerman and Dunwoody). Seminar work will concentrate on both basic skills and discussion of central questions such as: What can one reasonably expect audiences to learn from an informal science message? How does one explain concepts and processes to informal audiences? How does one communicate effectively about what science does and does not know? What are effective approaches to design in different media? How do diverse audiences receive and interpret informal education differently? And how does one assess and evaluate informal education?

A crucial role of the seminar will be peer formative assessment. Students will present their informal education product to the seminar group and receive formative feedback. The seminar goals will be to enable all participants to (a) develop skills in evaluating informal education products, with modeling by the faculty; (b) experience a wide range of approaches to informal education; and (c) learn formative assessment strategies for improving their own projects. This format parallels the design of many research laboratories and teams.

We will also expect students to develop assessment tools for their projects, implement their projects, and evaluate their projects’ success in a real-world context. Recognizing that research also involves scholarship, students will present their evaluation results to the seminar and will be encouraged to consider presentations in other professional venues.

We emphasize that this program has an important natural incentive for the participation of STEM graduate students. Funding agencies value informal education components of STEM research activities. Thus the development of informal education materials in the course of this program is a valuable deliverable to the research projects supporting the participating students. Similarly, NSF is providing a major incentive to current and future young faculty through the CAREER Award program. While the incentive for CAREER applicants is strong, very often their capacity on the education side is not yet developed. This program is directed precisely at developing the capacity to respond to NSF by enabling participants to enhance their communication skills while bringing the excitement of STEM research to public audiences.
(Informal Education Team Leaders: Ackerman, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences; Dunwoody, School of Journalism and Mass Communication)

III.a.iii. Instructional Materials in K-12 Preservice Education

The creation of inquiry-based instructional materials is central to modern STEM higher education. In the past instructional materials were often developed for teaching laboratories. With the recent explosion of technological capabilities instructional materials have now permeated every facet of STEM higher education, not the least of which are asynchronous, direct access materials over the World Wide Web.
Often the graduate-through-faculty creators of these instructional materials do not have expertise in their design or evaluation. Such expertise does exist for K-12 STEM instructional materials, and is often part of preservice education programs at research universities. Thus we propose a CIRTL Instructional Materials program that brings STEM graduates-through-faculty together with the instructional materials expertise of education schools. The program will provide a teaching-as-research experience in the process of creating K-12 STEM instructional materials for national use.

The CIRTL Instructional Materials program will implement and evaluate a team approach to STEM professional development, building on the successful experiments of the NSF-funded K-Through-Infinity Professional Development Partnership (KTI) at UW (T. Millar, PI). Each team will consist of STEM graduates-through-faculty, education faculty, preservice students, inservice teachers, and STEM undergraduates. The team will create, implement (in a K-12 classroom), assess, and revise a product related to the research of the participating STEM graduates-through-faculty. These activities will be embedded within a seminar which will provide the basic skills in instructional materials development and a forum for formative assessment and sharing of work. This seminar will be co-taught by one STEM faculty and one education faculty (initially Goodman and Stewart).

The outcomes of the CIRTL Instructional Materials program will be several. First, graduates-through-faculty will develop capability in design, development, and evaluation of STEM instructional materials. Also, the implementations in K-12 classrooms will permit STEM graduates-through-faculty to directly study changes in student understanding of science content and ability to engage in their own inquiry. Use of materials in a diverse set of schools will provide opportunities to study performance across a wide range of student factors. All of these skills and experiences will transfer to the development of higher education instructional materials.

Second, graduates-through-faculty will gain an understanding of pre-service education that is now largely absent in STEM faculty. We believe that this will influence their future teaching and mentoring of potential K-12 STEM teachers. Equally important, preservice and inservice teachers as well as the education faculty will gain knowledge and insight about STEM fields and the processes of STEM research.
Third, teams will produce high-quality K-12 STEM instructional materials for national use. Two successful pilot programs at UW-Madison—The Science Education Scholars Program (coordinated by the Center for Biology Education) and the School of Education’s Modeling for Understanding in Science Education (MUSE; Stewart, Cartier & Passmore in press) — provide examples of such products (www.wcer.wisc.edu/ncisla/muse/). CIRTL will scale these successful pilots to larger numbers of teams, and create tools and strategies for the transfer of the CIRTL Instructional Materials program to other research universities.

Lastly, we hope to demonstrate that by having STEM undergraduates in their first or second year participate in this program, some may be recruited into the K-12 STEM teaching profession. Seymour and Hewitt (1997) find that many entering STEM undergraduates have an interest in K-12 STEM teaching, an interest Seymour and Hewitt find to have usually disappeared by graduation.

Our pilot programs have identified important incentives that make it desirable and feasible for individuals to participate. For STEM graduate students, a key professional incentive is again the expectation of NSF and other funding agencies that research programs have a broader impact. The CIRTL Instructional Materials program provides important training for linking research results to K-12 education, and we anticipate that, as with the CIRTL Informal Education program, research PI’s will support their graduate students in producing instructional materials based on their research. For in-service teachers the activity can be applied to masters degree programs, or to the State-required professional development experiences necessary to renew teaching licenses. Course credit is an important incentive for both pre-service teachers and the STEM undergraduates.

The number of instructional materials teams will be increased over the duration of CIRTL, beginning the first year with three teams of six to seven members each and with a goal of 12 teams at the end of 5 years.
(Instructional Materials Team Leaders: Goodman, Entomology; Stewart, Curriculum and Instruction)


III.a.iv. Internships in Varied Learning Environments

Although many doctoral students are interested in faculty careers and teaching (Golde & Dore, 2001), surveys suggest that they are not prepared for the full range of faculty responsibilities or for the kinds of colleges and universities in which they are likely to be employed (Golde & Dore, 2001; National Academies of Science, 2000; Nyquist & Woodford, 2000). The highly successful Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) program is an effort to redress these shortcomings by integrating graduate education and professional socialization (Gaff et al., 2000). Variations on the PFF model have been widely adopted. Most include the opportunity for graduate students to apprentice with faculty mentors and learn about faculty life in different kinds of institutions. Similarly, the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (2000) has recommended that STEM postdoctoral training be enhanced by including teaching and other experiences related to career goals.
We propose a CIRTL internship program to provide STEM graduate students and postdoctoral researchers opportunities to implement teaching-as-research in various venues. Typically, these internships will occur after preparation in related CIRTL activities.

The internships in higher education will take place at a set of local colleges and universities that provides an array of institutional types. For the UW laboratory, these institutions will include UW itself; the Madison Area Technical College; Beloit College and Edgewood College (liberal arts colleges); and the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater (a 4-year comprehensive). (Letters of endorsement appended.) All of these institutions have one or more STEM departments with instructors engaged in teaching innovation, providing fertile ground for teaching-as-research activities. The scope of work taken on by the intern will vary, with possibilities ranging from developing and testing an assessment tool to teaching a class for a semester.

The internships in informal education will primarily be on the UW campus. Like most research institutions, UW has a large number of research programs with substantial funds for education and public outreach. Programs such as the Ice Cube neutrino experiment or the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies will supply rich opportunities for interns. We will also explore internships in museums, building on the NSF-funded Internships in Public Science Education collaboration between UW and the Discovery World in Milwaukee. Another alternative at UW is The Why Files, an award-winning science Web site (whyfiles.org), which offers the “Science Behind the News.” Students working for the site will develop writing, research, graphic design, and content development expertise in a medium that is fast becoming a major source of science, health, and environmental information.

Internships in teaching to diverse student audiences can be provided in many ways. At UW we have an important opportunity for interns to develop a deeper understanding of pipeline issues. Thus we will offer internships in the Precollege Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence (PEOPLE). PEOPLE is a joint effort by school districts in Madison, Milwaukee, Beloit, and Racine and UW to increase the enrollment and graduation of African American, American Indian, Asian American (especially Southeast Asian American), Latino/a, and disadvantaged students at UW. The PEOPLE program for high school students is a 4-year comprehensive program with a summer residential component at UW that includes STEM classes and research experiences. There is also a strong professional development component for STEM high school teachers. CIRTL interns will teach in the summer programs, and if they wish, continue their work the following semester with the participating K-12 teachers.

We will also create internships via the post-doctoral exchange program between UW and Howard University. As part of the transfer to the CIRTL network we will explore internships at historically black colleges and universities and predominantly women colleges.
All of these internship programs will draw heavily on the concept of learning community. Both the PFF and KTI programs have shown that it is essential that interns not be isolated. Thus, each intern will be supported by a team that includes faculty and peer mentors. In addition, each cohort of interns will meet in a regular seminar to reflect, share, and synthesize new approaches to their teaching-as-research practice. We will model the seminar after laboratory research groups that come together to discuss different experiments related to answering a common question. Ultimately, the interns will develop a portfolio, including a journal of their experiences, their reflections on moving theory to practice, and their increased knowledge of the diversity of students’ learning styles.
(Internships Team Leaders: Callahan, Graduate Student Professional Development Office; T. Millar, Mathematics)

III.a.v. Teaching and Learning with Diverse Student Audiences

The National Science and Technology Council (2000) has identified women and minorities’ participation in STEM fields as a precondition for ensuring a strong U.S. workforce for the 21st century. Though progress has been made in attracting women and minorities into STEM fields, this success has been dampened by high dropout rates. High-ability women drop out of math courses about 30% more often than men, and high-ability African Americans drop out of science courses about 40% more often than Whites (Steele, 1997). These high dropout rates cannot be explained by differences in precollege academic preparation for STEM. Women students and students of color enter STEM fields with academic backgrounds and test scores comparable to those of White males (Grandy, 1998; Tracey & Sedlacek, 1987; Sax, 1994; Nettles, Thoeny, & Gosman, 1986; Seymour & Hewitt, 1997).

Mounting research shows the pivotal role of classroom experiences on student learning and persistence (Cabrera et al., 2001; Colbeck et al., 2001; Tinto, 1997). Research has also found that these classroom experiences are a complex combination of teaching practices, delivered curriculum as experienced by the students, and climate permeating interactions among students and between instructors and students (Cabrera & Nora, 1994; Stark & Lattuca, 1997). When classroom experiences are positive, students gain in competence, self-confidence, and awareness of the occupational choices open in STEM (Colbeck, et al. 2001). On the other hand, poor teaching, poorly structured curriculum, or gender- and ethnic-based prejudices cause students to change majors, experience lower than anticipated academic development, and be strongly predisposed to drop out from the institution. This research also shows that gender- and ethnic-based barriers in classroom experiences are often present (Drew, 1996; Sax, 1994). Seymour and Hewitt (1997), for instance, found that women often mention a hostile classroom climate in their engineering classes as a key factor in their decision to change majors.

Put simply, many STEM faculty are not aware of these gender- and ethnic-based issues and thus do not design their teaching practice to respond to them. It is our firm belief that STEM faculty wish to serve all students well, and with heightened awareness and knowledge they will be more prone to create equitable classroom climates and engage in effective teaching practices for all students. Such abilities will soon become a requirement of the STEM professoriate as future STEM faculty will be teaching ever more diverse student populations.
The challenge of addressing equity issues in STEM higher education classrooms is of such importance that we propose to develop a resource that will serve both the CIRTL Professional Development Program and the national STEM faculty more broadly. Our approach will be modeled on that of the College Level One (CL-1) team of the NISE, which synthesized research knowledge in key areas of education practice, and transformed those syntheses into products easily accessible to STEM faculty. The products of this approach can be found on the heavily used CL-1 Innovations in STEM Education Web site (www.wcer.wisc.edu/nise/cl1) which includes the Field-tested Learning Assessment Guide (FLAG), the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG), the LT2 (Learning Through Technology), and the Collaborative Learning modules.

We will begin with a comprehensive synthesis of what is known about (a) effective teaching practices; (b) students’ experience with different curricula; and c) equitable classroom environments conducive to learning. This research will lay the foundation for an Equitable Classroom Practices module for the Innovations in STEM Education Web site. Likely components of this module include:
• A primer on classroom equity issues
• Personal stories to help raise STEM faculty awareness (e.g., students’ vignettes about practices that inhibit equitable outcomes; instructors’ stories about discovering equity problems in their learning environments)
• A compendium of best classroom practices for diverse student audiences;
• Case studies to show how instructors have employed these classroom practices to meet specific goals and objectives
• Links to other resources

Following the CL-1 model, we will use the CIRTL Fellows program (see section IV) to bring together education researchers and STEM faculty who are nationally recognized for expertise in higher education equity issues. Burstyn and Cabrera will be the Lead Fellows, providing initial intellectual direction and assistance in developing the team. The Fellows will first synthesize the intellectual foundation and produce scholarly products (e.g., meta-analyses, literature summaries, databases, publications) that will be a foundation for both researchers and practitioners entering the subject area. We will join in this effort with the NSF-funded Diversity in Mathematics Education (DIME) Center at UW, Berkeley, and UCLA, which is developing a research foundation for preparing K-12 mathematics teachers (www.wcer.wisc.edu/dime; letter of endorsement appended.)

Then the Fellows will join with Mathieu (former CL-1 Institutes Director) and other CIRTL members to transform the syntheses into products readily accessible to STEM faculty. CIRTL will provide technical assistance in product development, especially creation of an effective Equitable Classroom Practices Web site, and associated workshop and dissemination materials. Following the previous CL-1 products the Web site will undergo extensive formative and summative evaluation.

Graduates-through-faculty will be involved in this process in two important ways. First, the Fellows will work with STEM graduate students (employed as PAs) in developing the research synthesis. These students will become intimately familiar with education research, which will help them build bridges with education schools in their future institutions. Second, CIRTL graduates-through-faculty will be recruited to apply the ideas directly in their classrooms and do teaching-as-research on the efficacy of the classroom techniques being promoted.
The results of this work will be integrated into every facet of the CIRTL Professional Development Program. The course Teaching and Learning with Diverse Student Audiences will derive from this work, and the curricular materials will be included on the Web site, thus promoting the offering of the course throughout the nation. We will develop activities for the Learning Community designed to raise graduate-through-faculty awareness and capability for teaching to diverse student audiences. And we will work with all team leaders to address issues of diversity in their programs.
(Diverse Student Audiences Team Leaders: Burstyn, Chemistry; Cabrera, Educational Administration)


III.a.vi. Integration within the CIRTL Learning Community

Structuring CIRTL as a learning community focused on teaching and learning is central to our program design. The CIRTL Learning Community will (a) provide a physical and intellectual home where graduates-through-faculty can develop their teaching practice; (b) be a welcoming environment for those beginning to explore change in their approach to teaching and learning; (c) serve as the home for all CIRTL activities; (d) furnish mentoring and leadership opportunities; and (e) be an ongoing source of support for those who have participated in CIRTL programs and now are applying teaching-as-research in their classrooms.

In addition to the CIRTL activities previously described, the CIRTL Learning Community will also be home to several formative activities. First, we will create a peer-mentor program (where “peer” may be any of graduate students, post-docs, and faculty), an electronic drop-in clinic, and a referral service. An important role of the Learning Community will be to support those trying to do teaching-as-research for the first time. For example, a teaching assistant might want to develop and evaluate a new inquiry-based exercise in symmetry rules, or a post-doc might want to evaluate a Java applet teaching astronautics by simulating a rocket launch to Mars, or a faculty member might want to determine if ConcepTests are effective in her large mechanical engineering course. It is essential that such reform-ready instructors not be isolated and have support when problems arise.

Second, the Learning Community will offer activities that deepen understanding of teaching and learning and integrate graduate-through-faculty experiences. We will build on the successful CCLE faculty development program (see section II.b) and develop graduate-through-faculty Roundtables, small interdisciplinary groups of new and advanced graduate students, post-docs, and faculty. Facilitators will help participants engage in wide-ranging discussions addressing both the content of their CIRTL activities (e.g., curriculum development, informal education, internship supervision, etc.) and the relationship between these activities and other aspects of academic life. These roundtables will model using teaching and learning experiences as opportunities for self-reflection and mentoring, support participants as they move from theory to practice and back again, and provide a platform for socialization and professional development.

Third, the Learning Community will help foster the leadership skills necessary for CIRTL graduates-through-faculty to function as change agents at their future institutions. Advanced graduate students, post-docs, and faculty will be offered training in peer mentoring and group facilitation and will meet weekly for ongoing support and assistance—an approach that CCLE has found to be scalable to large numbers. Both peer mentors and group facilitators will be carefully selected for related experiences and skills. They will go through training and will meet weekly for on-going support and assistance with their learning and growth as mentors.
Fourth, the Learning Community will host large-group events composed of all CIRTL participants to focus on the development of shared values about teaching and learning. Campus and national leaders will be brought to these events to broaden institutional and professional awareness.

Physically, the Learning Community will consist of offices and a multipurpose space dedicated to CIRTL activities. Office space will be required for coordinating staff, as well as for students and faculty who rotate through leadership positions. The multipurpose space will be used for formal seminars and informal discussions and optimally will be large enough to handle 40 people. For the UW laboratory we have begun discussions with the Wisconsin Union for such space.
We envision extending the Learning Community beyond the boundaries of a physical space as CIRTL activities create an ever-increasing network of participants at each institution. In formalizing this network, we will emulate the approach adopted by Project Kaleidoscope’s Faculty for the 21st Century network, using electronic communications, annual symposia, social events, and the like to link current CIRTL participants with CIRTL alumni.
(Learning Community Team: Brower, Social Work; Carlson-Dakes, CCLE; Moore, Chemistry)


III.b. Transfer of Success: Building a National Network

Time and again, research shows that large-scale STEM education reform is thwarted more by difficulty in institutionalization and dissemination than by the development of effective practices in teaching and learning (Barr & Tagg, 1995; Birnbaum, 1988; Eiseman & Fairweather, 1996; Fairweather, 2000; Green, 1997; Gumport & Pusser, 1997; Huba & Freed, 2000; Tierney, 1999; Tobias, 1992). From this perspective, the ultimate success of CIRTL must be measured by its influence on graduate-through-faculty development at a significant number of research institutions throughout the nation. To achieve this impact, we will create a national CIRTL Network.
Initially we propose to include 10 institutions in the CIRTL Network, including UW, MSU, and PSU. The Network must span the range of research institutions in the U.S. In Year 1, we will categorize research universities by their current commitment to (a) faculty development programs to improve teaching and learning, (b) reform in STEM undergraduate and graduate education, and (c) scholarship on teaching-related activities. We will also classify these institutions by (a) number of women and racial/ethnic minority STEM Ph.D. students and (b) percentage of STEM doctoral recipients going into teaching positions at nonresearch universities. We will then select seven additional research universities to represent variation on these commitment and demographic factors. Thus the CIRTL Network will represent 10% of research universities producing 80% of Ph.D.s.

For every institution in the Network, we propose to test various combinations of programs and implementation strategies. Our goal will be to identify a set of transfer and institutionalization strategies most likely to be effective in the diverse environments of all research universities. We consider four levels of intervention. The first level—the UW as a laboratory—will be the most intensive intervention. We will not attempt to adapt the CIRTL program to other research institutions until evaluation has shown successful progress toward accomplishing the CIRTL goals at UW (see Evaluation and Research plans in section VI).

Two institutions—MSU and PSU—constitute the second level of intervention. We will focus our most intensive transfer efforts at these two institutions, led by the CIRTL Evaluation and Research Team. We will involve MSU and PSU faculty and administrators, the eventual adapters of CIRTL innovations, in the developmental work at UW, with two anticipated outcomes: (a) that the close interaction between UW, MSU, and PSU will lead to improved CIRTL products; and (b) that making the developers and adapters aware of each others’ needs and situations will increase the odds of success in transferring CIRTL program to MSU and PSU (Tornatzky, Fleisher, & Chakrabarti, 1990).
PSU and MSU represent similar institutions at which we will employ two very different transfer strategies. At PSU, we will test a “bottom-up” approach using one or more departments with a strong track record in STEM education reform. Our strategy here will be modeled on a method developed by the Collaboration for the Advancement of College Teaching and Learning in Minnesota, where the host institution identifies a team of key STEM faculty and administrators who make a commitment to the innovation. (Such PSU faculty have written letters of endorsement for this proposal.) In contrast, at MSU we propose to target established institutional structures already shown to be supportive of STEM education but not necessarily reporting to STEM departments or their faculties. The MSU Graduate School, the Bailey Scholars Program (a learning community of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members located in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources), and various existing professional development programs are examples. Here we will see if we can achieve large-scale transfer through already established university-wide organizations.

The remaining seven institutions in the CIRTL Network will be the targets for the third level of intervention. These institutions will represent a broad, nationally representative group of research universities potentially helped by CIRTL but only loosely affiliated with it. We anticipate that a wide variety of adaptation strategies will be necessary. Nonetheless, our fundamental approach will be based on the model of Tornatzky et al. (1990). The Engineering Coalition of Schools for Excellence in Education and Leadership (ECSEL), using this model, showed that a key to success in transferring reform from one institution to another is having researchers and faculty at both institutions actively assist in the transfer process. Active networks of like-minded STEM faculty and administrators are much more likely to succeed in institutionalizing reform than individual faculty working in isolation (Eiseman & Fairweather, 1996).

The transfer process will start with each third-level network institution sending two representatives to a meeting sponsored by CIRTL. Network representatives will share their current professional development, teaching and learning, and equity issues, and we will present and discuss the CIRTL program and its implementation at UW, MSU, and PSU. After returning to their campuses, network representatives will identify the CIRTL tools and strategies they find most suited to local needs. They also will select a local team to implement the transfer and carry out the reforms. Members of the CIRTL Evaluation and Research Team will visit each network institution to guide the network institutions in “constructing their own way” for implementation, and to gather information for subsequent design of evaluation instruments. At this stage, we will send a team of UW, MSU, and PSU faculty and staff to each network institution to initiate the formal transfer of relevant tools and strategies. They will deliver materials, describe the best ways to use the tools and strategies, and discuss their own experiences. The network institutions will then implement the tools and strategies. At a relevant time, the CIRTL Evaluation and Research Team will send instruments to each site to assist them in collecting evaluative data; the team will follow up with a site visit to interview participants. We will use these data to provide formative feedback to network institutions during implementation, and ultimately to develop summative findings about the transfer process.

Based on an assessment of these dissemination efforts at the third-level network institutions, we will expand and refine strategies for wider dissemination. The CIRTL Network institutions will become engines for further national transfer of the CIRTL successes. Given success in the CIRTL development and transfer strategies, we anticipate expanding the CIRTL Network after the initial 5-year project.
The fourth level of intervention will reach all other research institutions potentially benefiting from our work but not within the initial CIRTL Network. We will reach out to all research institutions through a national conversation, described in the next section.

To demonstrate success, CIRTL must show that its Professional DevelopmentPprogram can be adapted by other research institutions. A basic principle of the CIRTL transfer strategy is that such adaptations must require little additional funding for either the transfer or the institutionalization. Previous research has shown that institutional leaders are unwilling to make initial commitments to change when maintenance of reforms will require substantial ongoing funding (Colbeck, 2002; Eiseman & Fairweather, 1996). Sack, Bras, Daniel, Hendrickson, Smith, and Levitan (1999) have recommended looking for “grant-neutral” dissemination strategies—that is, reforms that do not require substantial additional funds to continue over time. We have designed the CIRTL activities (section III.a) to include non-financial incentives for participants and to ensure that their implementation will not require resources above those reasonably available at research institutions. Similarly, we will seek institutionalization and transfer strategies that are not resource-intensive.