BUILDING A MINNESOTA STATE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

STEM NETWORK

THE SECOND MINNESOTA CONFERENCE:  June 13-14, 2008

The Second Minnesota PKAL partnership workshop will take place June 13 (Friday) at 4 pm through June 14 (Saturday) at 4 pm at North Hennepin Community College.  Details on hotel accommodations, program, etc. will be posted soon.

THE FIRST MINNESOTA CONFERENCE: April 25-26, 2008
"Keeping Students Engaged in STEM"

• Minnesota State Colleges and Universities has been selected to be one of four higher education systems nationwide to partner in a National Science Foundation grant to build and sustain regional networks of faculty and administrators committed to improving STEM teaching and learning.
• Leadership for the grant is provided by Project Kaleidoscope, a nationwide informal alliance of colleges and universities committed to building and sustaining strong undergraduate STEM programs.
• To participate, colleges and universities must commit to sending institutional teams of faculty and administrators to workshops in Minnesota during 2008 and a national meeting in June 2009 in Washington, D.C.
• The first Minnesota Conference, Keeping Students Engaged in STEM, is April 25-26, 2008 at Southwest Minnesota State University. Participants will:
  
  • Share teaching strategies that will keep undergraduates engaged in STEM courses;
  • Discuss system-wide and institutional transformations required to support increasing the number and quality of STEM majors
  • Begin the process of creating sustainable social networks of faculty and administrators committed to using research-based pedagogical and assessment approaches to strengthening STEM learning
  • Learn about research-based teaching pedagogies from state and national experts
• Each MnSCU campus is invited to send a team of 2-3 participants (recommended 1 administrator and 1-2 faculty)

The National Science Foundation has awarded Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) a grant of $845,998 to pilot a National STEM Faculty Development project. This will be an eighteen-month effort to determine what works in collaborating with formal networks to strengthen expertise within and across networks committed to adapting, implementing, and assessing contemporary research-based approaches to strengthen student learning in STEM fields.  MnSCU is one of the college and university systems collaborating with PKAL on this project.

There are several deliverables embedded in this project:

• increase the number of faculty within a specific network engaged collectively in exploring, adapting, implementing, and assessing contemporary STEM pedagogies, faculty who are working with colleagues on their home campus, within the network and within the broader PKAL community
• inform campus/network colleagues of these STEM faculty of the potential of contemporary pedagogies to serve institutional goals for student learning and national goals in the educational, scientific and technological arenas
• develop a "work-in-progress" PKAL Handbook on STEM Faculty Development that serves as an annotated resource
• establish sustainable "mini-networks" within larger networks for the continued sharing of ideas and materials over the long-term
• identify promising practices in shaping social networks for the dissemination of ideas and materials shaping the future of learning in the undergraduate STEM environment.

Project Kaleidoscope Phase VI: Encouraging Collaborations for Developing Undergraduate STEM Faculty (http://www.pkal.org/activities/PKALPhaseVI.cfm ) is a leveraging project. We will leverage PKAL resources (people, ideas, and funds) with resources from existing and new national and regional networks through a coordinated sequence of activities. Activities within individual networks will include:

• a series of one or two-day workshops spotlighting contemporary research-based approaches at which faculty and administrators:
  • have opportunities to work with and learn from leading pedagogical practitioners (from the network/PKAL), to have hands-on experience with contemporary approaches and gain greater understanding of the learning theory undergirding them
  • develop an extended agenda for action that advances pedagogical reform on their home campus and within the network
• consultancies, capitalizing on expertise within the network/PKAL, that provide continuing advice and counsel on adapting, implementing, and assessing new pedagogies to network faculty, campus/ network leaders and others responsible for supporting such faculty agents of change
• virtual social networking conversations about theoretical and practical implications of pedagogical innovation and institutional transformation, again capitalizing on resident expertise both within the network and PKAL, extending discussions that take place during workshops and consultancies.

Meetings, workshops, and other events/opportunities will be announced here as the information becomes available.

Last Modified: Monday, May 12, 2008 12:58 by Jeffrey Anderson