Innovative Higher Education最新文献

This study describes how an innovative form of support strengthened diversity goals in an institution of higher learning. The Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative (SHERC) at Northern Arizona University recently completed its first funding cycle supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. This study examines progress on two of SHERC's principal goals: support the expansion of health equity research produced by SHERC-affiliated faculty and advance early-stage investigators (ESI) and underrepresented (UR) faculty research productivity. SHERC-affiliated faculty publications are described and the focus of a series of social network analyses (SNA). SHERC-affiliated faculty had access to an array of professional development opportunities. The number of supported faculty increased from 32 to 100 with a growing percentage of ESI and UR faculty. The number of UR and ESI faculty authors increased most rapidly over time. ESI and UR SHERC-affiliated faculty were co-authors in 72% and 45%, respectively, of the 139 total publications in the 5-year publication record. SNA centrality metrics revealed the important influence of ESI and UR faculty in the demonstrated increases in research publications over time. The increase of health-equity related research publications and concomitant expansion of ESI and UR faculty participation in these efforts can be facilitated by coordinated types of support offered by faculty development programs such as SHERC. The results from this study reinforce the importance of networks in organizational change efforts at institutions of higher learning seeking to build research capacity and increase scientific and community impact by advancing workforce diversity.

The current study examined how participation in an undergraduate research experience (URE) that provides a counterspace affects sociocognitive factors (science self-efficacy, science identity, and academic self-concept) and how they, in turn, may shape science career intention in a sample of STEM undergraduate students. STEM majors from a public university in California completed surveys from 2017 to 2020 and rated their science identity, science self-efficacy, academic self-concept, and their intention to pursue a science-related research career. Structural equation modeling shows that URE participants reported higher (a) science self-efficacy, (b) science identity, and (c) academic self-concept relative to students who did not participate in the URE. While there was an indirect effect of science self-efficacy on science career intention mediated by science identity, higher science self-efficacy and academic self-concept were negatively associated with the intention to pursue a science career. MANOVA results suggest that URE participants fared better than non-URE students in all outcomes across all sub-groups. These results highlight the importance of an identity-focused UREs and the counterspace it fosters among STEM majors from diverse backgrounds.

Traditional college advising, whereby advisors provide course assignments according to standardized placement test scores, has undergone major transformation in recent years. New placement models, like "informed self-placement" based on multiple measures of documented student achievement, are growing in popularity but remain understudied. To address this gap in scholarship, we took advantage of a unique opportunity presented by statewide reform in Florida to explore how Florida College System advisors described the implementation of informed self-placement and multiple measures between 2014 and 2019, paying special attention to emergent challenges and corresponding solutions. Our findings, drawn from the perspectives of 275 advisors representing 19 different institutions shared during semi-structured focus group sessions, revealed that advisors used a combination of high school experiences, non-cognitive factors, and continued placement testing to inform course recommendations that students could then choose to act upon or ignore when registering for their classes. We also observed several challenges (i.e., increased workload, insufficient information, and student resistance) that advisors managed through group advising, advanced preparation, and self-diagnostic tools.

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a Bystander Leadership™ Program (BLP) designed to mitigate gender and racial biases among faculty at a research university. The BLP workshop, grounded in comprehensive local research, provided faculty with practical intervention skills to address observed biases in academic settings. A quasi-experimental design was employed, involving tenured and tenure-track faculty (N = 253) from STEM and Social and Behavioral Science (SBS) departments. Participants were surveyed before and three months after the workshop (Intervention Group) or three months apart (Comparison Group), assessing five variables: notice bias, self-efficacy, perceived benefits of action, perceived risks of action, and actual intervention in bias incidents. The findings reveal that the Intervention Group exhibited significant increases in self-efficacy and actual interventions from pretest to posttest, unlike the Comparison Group, which showed no changes. Notably, foreign-born faculty initially had lower notice bias scores compared to U.S.-born faculty. Post-intervention, notice bias significantly increased among foreign-born faculty in the Intervention Group. Furthermore, a 60% faculty participation rate was identified as the threshold for perceiving departmental endorsement of inclusive practices. These results underscore the BLP's potential to enhance faculty's confidence and proactive engagement in addressing bias, particularly among foreign-born faculty, and highlight the importance of broad participation for fostering inclusive academic environments.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10755-024-09765-x.

The goal of this Research Education Program (REP) is to increase diversity in science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine (STEMM) fields. However, few programs include research internship opportunities and summer education programs for student participants. In our REP we integrated a research internship program into the summer curriculum and provided stipends aimed to alleviate the financial stress for underrepresented minority (URM) students, allowing them to focus on research, academics, and professional development. More than 90% of research mentors were satisfied with interns' ability in various aspects of STEM research, including integrating research with academic work, developing research skills, engaging in research, formulating scientific hypotheses, implementing constructive feedback, and their readiness to become independent researchers. Over 80% of student interns reported satisfaction with the positive impact of the internship program on their professional development in scientific research, oral presentation, and written communication skills. This improvement was attributed to experiences such as preparing posters and manuscripts, collaborating in teams, working independently, and engaging in overall program activities. There was a significant positive association (r(9) = .60, P < 0.05) between student satisfaction and research mentors' evaluation of their satisfaction with students' performance during the research internship program.

Reducing student attrition and drop-out rates is of paramount concern for higher education scholars, policymakers, and practitioners in evaluating institutional effectiveness. There is some evidence that students’ satisfaction can be critical to the success of any postsecondary educational institution, but little is known about how campus environments shape students’ satisfaction. Using structural equation modeling techniques, the authors use multi-institutional survey data to examine the relationship between Culturally Engaging Campus Environments (CECE), sense of belonging, and satisfaction. Specifically, we explore the direct effects of CECE indicators on satisfaction and the mediating role of sense of belonging. Our results showed that a direct effect of CECE indicators is positively associated with satisfaction. Results also indicated that an indirect effect of CECE indicators contributes to a significant increase in satisfaction through sense of belonging. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

This study aimed to improve the implementation of a redesign of teacher preparation programs at a large public university in the United States. This complex redesign impacted over 150 courses across 27 programs, involving over 200 faculty and 2,500 students annually. Implementing the redesign posed significant challenges for supporting fidelity and agency across all faculty involved, including many part-time faculty and new hires. We aimed to improve implementation by improving the faculty’s knowledge, confidence, and perceived usefulness of implementation fidelity practices. To do so, we developed two interventions: a series of individualized course fact sheets and an online orientation module. To study the effects of these interventions, we used a convergent mixed methods approach. Results showed that those faculty who used the new course fact sheets had significant increases in their knowledge and confidence of implementation fidelity practices and significant increases in their sense of teaching agency. The results also showed more positive outcomes for those using the fact sheets than those who participated in an orientation module. This study has important implications for faculty and administrators in higher education, demonstrating the potential of course fact sheets as an innovative, scalable solution to improve the implementation of large-scale redesigns.

While prior research often depicts a dire scenario for postdoctoral scholar employment and career trajectory, we offer evidence of postdocs’ agency despite challenging circumstances. Through interviews with 30 postdocs employed full-time in the United States, thematic analysis illustrated postdocs’ demonstration of agency as an asset they bring into their employment. We review prior literature about individuals’ sense of agency and argue for the extension of considering agency to postdocs. Our findings emphasize the importance of recognizing postdocs’ sense of agency amidst efforts to improve systemic issues within the research enterprise.

We approach productivity in science in a longitudinal fashion: We track scientists’ careers over time, up to 40 years. We first allocate scientists to decile-based publishing productivity classes, from the bottom 10% to the top 10%. Then, we seek patterns of mobility between the classes in two career stages: assistant professorship and associate professorship. Our findings confirm that radically changing publishing productivity levels (upward or downward) almost never happens. Scientists with a very weak past track record in publications emerge as having marginal chances of becoming scientists with a very strong future track record across all science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) fields. Hence, our research shows a long-term character of careers in science, with one’s publishing productivity during the apprenticeship period of assistant professorship heavily influencing productivity during the more independent period of associate professorship. We use individual-level microdata on academic careers (from a national registry of scientists) and individual-level metadata on publications (from the Scopus raw dataset). Polish associate professors tend to be stuck in their productivity classes for years: High performers tend to remain high performers, and low performers tend to remain low performers over their careers. Logistic regression analysis powerfully supports our two-dimensional results. We examine all internationally visible Polish associate professors in five fields of science in STEMM fields (N = 4,165 with N_art = 71,841 articles).

Historically, classrooms have utilized stationary furniture, facing front toward a centralized instructor position, and limiting student-to-student interactions. Such classrooms often stem from design processes that tend to focus on building codes and feedback from investors, architects, and planners, which leaves little input from instructors and students until the end (Britnell, et al., 2009). With little to no input from primary users, classrooms can become less inclusive or inaccessible in a variety of ways, especially for students with disabilities. One way to address this problem is to design flexible learning classrooms so that instructors and students can customize the room. Seemingly more inclusive, we wanted to understand how the physical elements of a flexible classroom create opportunities and barriers for students with disabilities. This mixed-methods study includes data from an online survey, interviews, and digital drawings. We utilized a purposeful sample of students with documented disabilities (n = 16) and used the eight universal design goals as our main coding schema. Results show students carry expectations and predictions about their classrooms based on the layout or arrangement; students’ social comfort can override physical comfort, even while expressing medical needs; students might misunderstand certain elements of flexible classrooms; and students can identify ways they were distracted by the room. Institutions and instructors interested in creating more inclusive spaces need to be intentional with flexible learning classrooms so that students can understand and utilize the affordances of these spaces.