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PARTNERS

VOICES

VISION

SEISMIC

SLOAN EQUITY AND INCLUSION IN STEM INTRODUCTORY COURSES

SEISMIC was created to bring together a group of institutions dedicated to

improving equity and inclusion in STEM foundational courses through parallel data analysis, coordinated experiments, and new institutional reform structures.

SEISMIC aims to set a new national standard for assessing success in STEM classrooms.

We aim to bring together faculty, staff, and students engaged in STEM reform on 10 large, public research university campuses in a 3-year sustained collaboration.

ACTIVITIES

GET CONNECTED

SCIENTIFIC WORKING GROUPS

Establish the key projects of the collaboration and work throughout the year to accomplish them. They execute parallel data analysis, coordinated experiments and interventions, and create structures to support institutional reform in STEM courses

  • Measurements
  • Classroom Experiments and Interventions
  • Structures to Support Reform

SUMMER MEETINGS

Opportunity to bring SEISMIC participants together to accelerate research, continue dialogue around SEISMIC efforts, and help build community.

Summer Meeting 2020 Location: _______

SPEAKER EXCHANGE PROGRAM

Throughout the year, each member institution will bring 6 or more speakers to their campus to share updates on research and the progress of the Working Groups.

OPPORTUNITIES

  • External funding for additional projects
  • Funding for graduate students to work in SEISMIC
  • Visibility for your work through Working Groups or campus affiliation
  • Greater statistical power through coordinated experiments
  • Publish in peer-reviewed STEM and STEM-education journals
  • Present research at national conferences

GET INVOLVED!

Website: https://sites.google.com/umich.edu/seismic

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SEISMIC_project

Join mailing list for monthly newsletters through website

Talk with Local PI about projects to get involved in on local campus

LOCAL PIs

FUNDER

“I hope, through participation in SEISMIC, to gain a more nuanced perspective of existing barriers to equity in STEM, and a better understanding of which interventions are most likely to be effective in a given course context or institutional setting. I'm also eager to see my own data gain new life through this multi-institutional, comparative approach. For a first step, I look forward to inviting SEISMIC participants to the University of Minnesota, so that my colleagues and I can learn from the network's Speaker Exchange.”

SEHOYA COTNER

University of Minnesota, Associate Professor, Biology Teaching and Learning

“I am looking forward to sharing some of the knowledge our institution has gained from engaging in cross-disciplinary and institutional collaborations around equity and inclusion in STEM courses and programs. The visualization of a simple metric like the Average Grade Anomaly has prompted conversations with program directors and faculty in STEM disciplines and has opened up spaces for more in-depth analyses. For example, as a part of IU’s Learning Analytics Fellows Program, faculty in the Chemistry Department are using the Average Grade Anomaly metric to gauge their course offerings as well as how grades vary vis a vis student characteristics and performance in other disciplines. We’ve also explored the academic progression in STEM. An Event History Analysis shows that STEM-related grade anomalies have a significant impact on student retention in STEM programs at IU. Graph analytical approaches show great potential for analyzing student pathways to degrees and informing curriculum design. I am looking forward to stimulating discussions on this work and hearing about other insights that members of the SEISMIC community will bring to the Summer Meeting.”

STEFANO FIORINI

Indiana University, Lead Research Management Analyst, Bloomington Assessment and Research

Sehoya Cotner

University of Minnesota

Chandralekha Singh

University of Pittsburgh

Linda Adler-Kassner

University of California, Santa Barbara

Tim McKay

University of Michigan

Brian Sato

University of California, Irvine

Marco Molinaro

University of California, Davis

Dennis Groth

Indiana University

Sara Brownell

Arizona State University

Becky Matz

Michigan State University

Chantal Levesque-Bristol

Purdue University

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Mission

“The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation makes grants primarily to support original research and education related to science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics. The Foundation believes that these fields—and the scholars and practitioners who work in them—are chief drivers of the nation's health and prosperity. The Foundation also believes that a reasoned, systematic understanding of the forces of nature and society, when applied inventively and wisely, can lead to a better world for all. “

"I direct the Teaching and Learning Research Center at UCI, and we provide data and research expertise to faculty who want to publish their teaching research projects. Because we have direct access to institutional data and expertise in computational statistics, we are able to look at campuswide trends in student success in STEM. But without greater context it is hard to know if what we are seeing is an aspect of UCI teaching culture or broader STEM teaching. I am looking forward to working with a network of collaborators who can also look at their institutional data so we can draw broader conclusions. Do all biology programs have high retention but difficulty with calculus? Do all math courses have more gender equity compared to other STEM courses? Can values affirmation assignments improve student learning in many different courses? Working to implement similar solutions and gather the same type of resulting data from different campuses is very exciting to me.“

ADRIENNE WILLIAMS

University of California, Irvine

Director, Teaching & Learning

Research Center