Inclusive Excellence Teacher-Scholar Workshop Materials
Inclusive Excellence Teacher-Scholar Workshop Materials
The Inclusive Excellence Teacher-Scholar Workshop (IETSW) program was developed to support Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) faculty to create inclusive and equitable (IE) spaces. The goals of the program included increasing faculty awareness, providing practice-based strategies, and supporting faculty as they make equity-minded changes in their classrooms to support students historically marginalized by higher education, including students of color, students who identify as LGBTQ+, and first-generation students.
Developed as a year-long, cohort-based program, IETSW was piloted in early 2018 and implemented and evaluated for four faculty cohorts between 2018-2022. The program reached 35% (n=40) of the College of Natural and Health Sciences full-time faculty across 11 departments with a 90% completion rate. Using an equity-minded approach, the IETSW program emphasized faculty’s personal growth given the necessity for individual cultural competence for long-term change and explicitly challenged the notion that higher education and STEM content are culture, race, and gender-free (or neutral).
Rethinking equity in terms of institutional and faculty change rather than perceived student deficits was an essential assumption and strategy of the program with the goal of addressing equity disparities in higher education. Bensimon and colleagues at the USC Center for Urban Education called this approach equity-mindedness. IETSW focused on how faculty can positively impact student experiences and covered the mainstays of academia, including the syllabus, classroom participation, course content, and grading and assessment strategies.
The IETSW materials are freely available for you to use. The overview of the IETSW program lists the topic covered in the program. For each topic, we share the materials for the workshop, including a detailed facilitation guide, a PowerPoint presentation, and materials associated with workshop activities. We have also included any pre- and post-workshop assignments.
The IETSW program highlighted the work of several amazing authors. To avoid copyright infringement, we did not include copies of the chapters we used with our materials. Rather, we encourage you to purchase the books.
Creative Commons License
When using the materials, please cite us and indicate the license the work is under. Our creative commons license allows you to make derivatives and changes but does require that the materials, and any new materials developed using our work, must be made available under the same license, and cannot be used for commercial purposes.
Citation for Materials: Keenan SM, Novak JD, Bergstrom C, Reinsvold LA, Shellito L, Romulo C, and James A. (2020) The Culturally Inclusive STEM Classroom: Professional Development Materials for Faculty,. STEM Inclusive Excellence Collective, University of Northern Colorado
Key Findings
- Over the course of the four years, 40 faculty participated in the yearlong workshops…Throughout these sessions, faculty demonstrated commitment to the program through attending and engaging in conversations at workshops, reading, articles, and completing reflection assignments.
- The knowledge faculty gained stretched beyond theoretical and practical understandings of race, racism, and other biases to include understanding themselves.
- Data from across measures indicated that participants were making changes in their courses such as making syllabus revisions, increasing communication with students, and indicating that they would continue to implement equity-minded practices.
More on project evaluation and outcomes
Challenges
Challenges included 1) shifting faculty’s perception from a student-deficit lens to an equity-minded lens that requires looking at the institution’s responsibility for inequities; 2) helping faculty understand equity and IE as a journey that involves a multitude of ongoing actions rather than a one-and-done approach; and 3) shifting our perception of our work from primarily offering evidence of inequities and strategies to address them to centering faculty’s personal growth and cultural competence as necessary for faculty to engage in this work authentically during and after their participation in the IETSW program.
Funding
The IETSW project was funded by a five -year Inclusive Excellence (IE-1) Grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
| Explore and Download IETSW Materials |
Contact Us
If you want to learn more about the Inclusive Excellence Teacher Scholar Program, have questions about the materials, or are curious about co-facilitating options, contact us via email at STEM.IEC@unco.edu
Susan M. Keenan, PhD
Susan is a computational biologist who now serves as the Associate Dean for Student Success. Susan identifies as a White, cis-woman and is a first-generation college graduate. She has a decade of experience offering professional development for STEM faculty.