Grant to Support STEM Educator Workshop
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowRose-Hulman Institute of Technology says a grant from the National Science Foundation will help fund a summer workshop for science, technology, engineering and math educators. The nearly $50,000 grant will fund scholarships to help participants attend the workshop, which will be held in June at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
March 24, 2014
News Release
Terre Haute, Ind. — Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support hosting the Making Academic Change Happen (MACH) workshop this summer to promote change management strategies for higher education science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) educators.
MACH will be conducted June 12-15 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, prior to the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference and Exposition in downtown Indianapolis.
MACH is a participant-centered workshop designed by Rose-Hulman professors to help teams of faculty and staff members, administrators and graduate students implement educational innovations on their campuses. These educators come with challenges, projects, and ideas; they leave with skills, strategies, and connections to become advocates for change on their campuses.
The workshop is organized around three themes: Knowing yourself, cultivating an allied community of colleagues and making change happen on campus. Within each theme, participants work specifically on their own change projects, while receiving support and direction from the workshop facilitators and other participants.
The $48,000 grant from NSF's Research in Engineering Education (REE) Division will help provide scholarships to support educators to attend the workshop.
“There are repeated calls within the STEM education community for changing the way we educate our students. Change management strategies are the centerpiece of the MACH curriculum,” said MACH Facilitator Co-Leader Julia Williams, PhD, Rose-Hulman's executive director of institutional research, planning, and assessment, and professor of English. “Many change agents feel isolated. By enlarging the community of scholars known to be engaged in change practices, the workshop provides tremendous support for future initiatives throughout higher education.”
The MACH workshop experience seeks to address the calls for change made by the National Academy of Engineering’s Engineer of 2020 project, President Obama's Educate to Innovate program and Association of American University’s Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative.
“MACH is especially useful to faculty and staff members who have tried and failed in leading change initiatives in the past, since these failures and setbacks emphasize the need for a different approach,” stated MACH Facilitator Co-Leader Ella Ingram, PhD, associate professor of applied biology and director of Rose-Hulman's Center for the Practice and Scholarship of Education. “The lack of systemic change in STEM education points to an important problem with the approach to change that the STEM education community has pursued thus far. Our workshop brings forth important conversations within STEM education in a rigorous, accessible way.”
Rose-Hulman is a national leader in STEM education innovation and several faculty members have considerable experience in bringing change in curriculum, classroom teaching techniques and technology implementation. Joining Williams and Ingram as facilitators will be Kay C Dee, PhD, associate dean of learning and technology and professor of applied biology and biomedical engineering; Steve Chenoweth, PhD, associate professor of computer science and software engineering; Craig Downing, PhD, department head and associate professor of engineering management; Richard House, PhD, professor of English; Glen Livesay, professor of applied biology and biomedical engineering; and Donald Richards, PhD, professor of mechanical engineering.
Educators can register for the MACH workshop at www.rose-hulman.edu/MACH by March 31.
About Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Founded in 1874, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology is dedicated to preparing its students with the world’s best undergraduate science, engineering, and mathematics education in an environment infused with innovation, intellectual rigor, and individualized attention. The college, located in Terre Haute, Indiana, has an enrollment of approximately 2,000 undergraduate students and 100 graduate students. For 15 consecutive years, U.S. News & World Report has rated Rose-Hulman as the top undergraduate engineering college in the nation whose highest degree is a bachelor’s or master’s. Rose-Hulman has also been recognized by The Princeton Review, which cited six of the institute’s professors within their 2012 Best 300 Professors book, the only institution of higher learning in Indiana to be included. Learn more at www.rose-hulman.edu.
Source: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology