Advancing Inclusive Leaders in STEM: Twenty Years of the Institute for Scientist & Engineer EducatorsEditors: Scott Seagroves, Austin Barnes, Anne J. Metevier, Jason Porter, & Lisa Hunter October, 2022 |
After 20 years of ISEE's Professional Development Program, we gathered alums to take stock of the work we have done, how it influences the work we do now, and how that work might go forward in th future.
We present the resulting collection, Leaders in Effective and Inclusive STEM: Twenty Years of the Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators.
See the introduction for a more complete discussion and outline. The collection of 35 articles written by 81 ISEE community members is published on ISEE’s eScholarship site and fall into the following subject areas (with more detailed summaries below):
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Professional development
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Diversity, equity and, inclusion
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Internships
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International perspectives
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Assessment
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Activity designs
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Impacts and future development
Finally, there is an article in which we share what we learned from two decades of work: Recommendations from 20 Years of Professional Development of Early Career Scientists and Engineers.
Articles on professional development:
After our introduction, the first section of this collection features professional development both within the ISEE PDP and extending out from it to influence other settings.
- The first article, led by Anne Metevier, presents ISEE’s vision of the sorts of learning experiences the PDP has always aspired to; this article updates our previous conception of "inquiry" to our new nomenclature of "authentic, inclusive STEM learning experiences."
- The next article, led by Barry Kluger-Bell, describes the in-the-moment facilitation of learning in such experiences, and our professional development work to grow participants' facilitation skills.
- The work led by Max Tarjan adapted leadership professional development from ISEE's PDP to non-academic workplace settings.
- In a bridge between this section on professional development and the next section on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the article led by Carley Corrado describes a model of organizational DEI work and its connections to experiences in the ISEE PDP.
Articles on diversity, equity, and inclusion:
In the ISEE PDP, social justice for groups that are marginalized in STEM was first addressed in the “diversity and equity” strand; later we renamed that part of our work the “equity and inclusion” theme. This section features two articles on these issues, following the previous article on DEI professional development, and leading into the first article of the next section on internships.
- Christine O'Donnell's contribution compares the equity and inclusion focus areas from ISEE’s PDP with the well-known culturally responsive and culturally relevant frameworks from the K–12 context.
- An article led by Nicholas Santiago details how a suite of science workshops for college transfer students was designed with a focus on promoting the learners’ science identities, in an effort to support students who may have backgrounds that are underrepresented in STEM fields.
Articles on internships:
One of ISEE’s other major programs is the Akamai Internship, which helps build Hawai‘i’s scientific and technical workforce. Because of the close interplay between the PDP and Akamai, ISEE and its participants have worked a great deal on the design of internship programs and internship projects. This section features three articles relating to internships.
- Flowing from the previous section on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, the first article led by Jerome Shaw discusses intentional strategies in the Akamai Internship for building a sense of inclusion and community among the interns and program staff.
- The entry led by Alexandra Holloway describes the design of internships at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as analogous to the design of “PDP-style” active learning experiences.
- The second article led by Jerome Shaw presents frameworks that support interns’ deeper understandings of their own projects, and how these frameworks interact with PDP activities the interns experience.
Articles with international perspectives:
Two members of the ISEE PDP community provide an international perspective on STEM and education in this section.
- In his contribution, Sebastiano Cantalupo describes graduate-level astrophysics courses with an emphasis on scientific practices that he designed and taught at universities in Switzerland and Italy; he compares the emphasis on practice to classical approaches to teaching and learning.
- The next essay from Barry Cense discusses his experiences using inquiry teaching and learning techniques in different cultural contexts.
Articles on assessment:
Participants in the ISEE PDP used an assessment-driven backward design process, and many participants have continued to use and expand on these assessment ideas. This section has two articles that describe assessment-related work after PDP participation.
- In his article, Michael Hammer describes developing homework problems influenced by the PDP’s frameworks.
- The article led by Kathy Cooksey explains using quizzes before and after a backward-designed unit, and using these data for long-term evaluation of one’s teaching.
Articles describing activity designs:
Every PDP participant worked on a team to design some sort of STEM learning experience. Many articles in Learning from Inquiry in Practice (2010) describe activity designs from the first decade of PDP participants; this section features more activity design descriptions from the PDP community.
- The article led by Daniel Contreras, a collaborator of PDP alum Philip Choi, discusses how PDP-influenced lab modules were adapted into self-guided physics labs for students to do on their own, remotely, due the pandemic.
- The entry led by Keely Finkelstein describes an activity on young stars-in-formation; this activity was designed and re-designed through the PDP for an undergraduate course in astronomy research methods and included a focus on the scientific practice of explanation.
- A second article led by Kathy Cooksey details a “starter” activity on galaxy classification that has been used to pique learners’ interest in galaxies in a variety of settings, from K-3 classrooms to undergraduate laboratories to outreach activities for all ages.
- The piece led by Rachel Frisbie discusses an activity on software development, and the challenges inherent when the activity’s STEM “content” is so much like what our community would call a STEM “practice.”
- The article led by Amber Tateno-Bisel describes an activity for high school students in a biodiversity program in Hawai‘i, including molecular and ecological content and scientific practices of explanation from evidence.
- A second article led by Nicholas Santiago describes an activity for transfer students entering the university that explores dose-response relationships in toxicology, and includes students role-playing as the Environmental Protection Agency.
- The contribution led by Mercedes Pozo Buil discusses another activity for transfer students entering the university, this one on the complexities of climate and its variabilities.
- In his piece, Frank Black details an ocean circulation activity, its effects on student performance, and how it was adapted for the pandemic.
- The entry led by Kauahi Perez explains a form of jigsaw the PDP community calls an “expert training model,” used here in a renewable energy activity for the Akamai Internship Program.
Articles on impacts and future directions
At the meeting "Advancing Inclusive Leaders in STEM: 20 Years of the PDP," panels reflected on the impact of the ISEE PDP from different perspectives, and looked ahead to future ways in which this work might continue. This section features contributions from the meeting's panels, and our recommendations for the future.
- The contribution led by Tuan Do describes the history of PDP influence on two major advanced summer schools for astronomical instrumentation.
- In the entry led by Colin West, four PDP community members discuss how the PDP’s focus on STEM practices impacted their research and teaching practices.
- In the piece led by Linda Strubbe, four PDP community members review their takeaways from the PDP’s work in inclusive leadership, and share examples of these lessons in action in their current work.
- The contribution led by Scott Severson describes three PDP community members’ applications of ISEE PDP ideas toward mentoring contexts.
- The discussion co-led by Raquel Martinez, Devin Silvia, and Emily Rice describes their experiences with advanced roles for returning participants within the ISEE PDP, and how those experiences influenced their subsequent careers.
- The entry led by Nicholas McConnell discusses four PDP community members’ applications of PDP approaches to new contexts as their careers have advanced.
- The piece led by Kimberley Mayfield explores four PDP community members’ experiences outside of academia, applying ideas from the ISEE PDP to careers in government and industry.
- The contribution led by Lauren Lui explores the possibly less explicit, indirect impacts of an experi-ence like the ISEE PDP on participants, particularly on members of underestimated groups, through four PDP community members’ narratives.
- The entry led by Robin Lovell shares case studies in the use of backward design and other pedagogical principles from four PDP community members.
- The contribution led by Devin Chu shares the experiences of four PDP community members who had originally interacted with the PDP from the student/learner perspective, when they were Akamai interns.
- The entry led by Saul Beceiro-Novo discusses the instructor as facilitator, and PDP community mem-bers’ uses of facilitation strategies in various contexts after their PDP participation.
Our recommendations
The last article in this section on impacts and future directions — and in the entire collection — is the PDP team’s review of the impacts and lessons learned from 20 years of the program. We describe what we feel are the essential features of the PDP, its impacts, and our recommendations for those who want to adapt or expand this work.