Institutional Transformation in
Higher Education
Susan Rundell Singer
Division Director – Undergraduate Education
National Science Foundation
Challenges
Many college graduates skills do not match
workforce needs
Programme for the International Assessment
of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) – young adults
born after 1980 (OECD/ETS study)
Gap in college attainment between individuals
from high and low SES families has widened in
one generation
PIAAC: How do the average scores of
U.S. millennials compare with those in
other participating countries?
In literacy, U.S.millennials scored lower
than 15 of the 22 participating
countries.Only millennials in Spain and
Italy had lower scores.
In numeracy, U.S.millennials ranked last,
along with Italy and Spain.
http://www.ets.org/s/research/30079/asc-millennials-and-the-future.pdf
PIAAC: How do millennials with different levels of
educational attainment perform over time and in
relation to their peers internationally?
 Although a greater percentage of young adults in the U.S.are
attaining higher levels of education since 2003, the numeracy
scores of U.S.millennials whose highest level of education is
high school and above high school have declined.
 U.S.millennials with a four-year bachelor’s degree scored
higher in numeracy than their counterparts in only two
countries: Poland and Spain.
 Our best-educated millennials—those with a master’s or
research degree—only scored higher than their peers in
Ireland, Poland, and Spain.
PIAAC: How do U.S. top-performing
and lower-performing millennials
compare to their international peers?
Top-scoring U.S.millennials (those at the 90th
percentile) scored lower than top-scoring millennials in
15 of the 22 participating countries, and only scored
higher than their peers in Spain.
Low-scoring U.S.millennials (those at the 10th
percentile) ranked last along with Italy and
England/Northern Ireland and scored lower than
millennials in 19 participating countries.
PIACC: What impact do demographic
characteristics have on the
performance of U.S. millennials?
 Among all countries, there was a strong relationship between
parental levels of educational attainment and skills; across all
levels of parental educational attainment, there was no country
where millennials scored lower than those in the United States.
 The gap in scores between U.S.millennials with the highest level of
parental educational attainment and those with the lowest was
among the largest of the participating countries.
 In most countries, native-born millennials scored higher than
foreign-born millennials; however, native-born U.S.millennials did
not perform higher than their peers in any other country.
Influence of family income on
college completion
http://www.pellinstitute.org/download
s/publicationsIndicators_of_Higher_Education_Equity
_in_the_US_45_Year_Trend_Report.pdf
U.S ranks 12th in
the world in
college
attainment for
young people
7
Pell Partnership 2015 Report
The average graduation gap between Pell
and non-Pell students at the institutional level
is only 5.7 percentage points. But the national
gap is 14 points, a result of large gaps at
specific colleges, as well as too many Pell
students enrolling at colleges with very low
graduation rates.
Colleges with large gaps need to do more to
ensure low-income student success, and more
selective institutions should open their doors to
more Pell students.
Higher ed has a key role – not just K-12
Carnevale & Strohl (2010)
If Americans were able to match the [science and
math] scores reached in Canada, which ranks seventh
on the O.E.C.D. scale, the United States’ gross domestic
product would rise by an additional 6.7 percent, a
cumulative increase of $10 trillion (after taking inflation
into account) by the year 2050, the report estimated.
http://equitablegrowth.o
rg/research/achieveme
nt-gap/
10
NSF Response
From Access to Completion – Scholarships for
STEM (S-STEM) Program
1. Increase the recruitment, retention, student success,
and graduation (and transfer) of low-income,
academically talented students in STEM.
2. Implement and study models, effective practices,
and/or strategies that contribute to success in STEM.
3. Contribute to the implementation and sustainability of
effective curricular and co-curricular activities in STEM
education.
S-STEM Program Updates
 Funding
 At least 60% of the funds must be used for scholarships
 Up to 40% of funds may be used for other things –
support structures, research, recruitment, etc.
 Why the change?
 Scholarships are not enough
 Student success is increased through participation in
systems of academic and student support structures
 A more systematic determination of what support
structures are effective will benefit the STEM education
community.
Federal STEM Education 5-Year Strategic
Plan (2013, 14 Federal Agencies)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/stem_stratplan_2013.pdf
Undergraduate Strategic Objectives
Implementation of evidence-based instructional practices
and innovations
Improve STEM education at 2-year colleges and transfer to 4year colleges
Support the development of university-industry partnerships to
provide relevant and authentic experiences
Address high failure rates in introductory undergraduate
mathematics
13
Why focus on evidence-based practices?
Current version
underway
Why authentic research experiences?
NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates
since 1958
Course-based research experience
 FY 2016 budget request
 U.S. National Academies consensus study underway
http://serc.carleton.edu/genomics/index.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6118
/408.full
15
Challenge of mathematics
 60% of students who arrive at postsecondary
education not ready for entry level mathematics
 5% of students pass developmental mathematics
courses.
 80% of the students who place into
developmental math do not complete any
college‐level course within 3 years.
Figures have been rounded. Source: The American Freshman: Forty Year Trends, John H. Pryor, Sylvia Hurtado, Victor B.
Saenz, Jose Luis Santos, and William S. Korn, Cooperative Institutional Research Institute, University of California, Los
Angeles, 2007.
16
Focusing on teaching practices is
not enough
Socio-emotional domain (new NRC
study)
Guided pathways to success
Systems approach – lessons learned
from ADVANCE
The StratEGIC Toolkit
 Users’ Guide
 Description of the research
 Key points on org change from social science research
 Suggestions for using the Toolkit to support organizational change to
support the advancement of STEM women scholars
 Briefs
 Frequently used interventions are described and analyzed to help
institutions construct their own change portfolios
 Institutional narratives
 Examples of how specific institutions have developed comprehensive
strategic change plans
Ann Austin (Michigan State) and Sandra Laursen (University of Colorado, Boulder)
http://www.colorado.edu/eer/research/strategic.html
Forthcoming article in Change: ADVANCing the Agenda for Gender Equity: Tools for
Strategic Institutional Change
Needed: Partnerships, Networks,
and Networks of Networks
 Networks = practitioners, researchers, professional
societies, improvement networks, informal setting,
including citizen science
 Science of learning = learning science + cognitive
psychology + educational psychology + cognitive
science + discipline-based education research +
scholarship of teaching and learning
 Learning engineers + instructional technologists +
computer scientists
http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/partnering-advance-learning-technologyenhanced-world
19
Disciplinary scientists as partners
Frontier science and cutting edge education
research create robust learning environments
Deep science disciplinary knowledge meets
education research (again)
 Discipline-based Education Research
When only physical reality will do
Embodied Cognition
Sian Bielock, University of Chicago
Susan Fischer, DePaul University
Can physically handling objects and
directly experiencing “the physics”
improve student understanding?
Action > Action >
Observation
Observepremot
or
M1
• Observers score lower on angular
momentum and torque problems
• fMRI patterns differ
R
SPL
Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Program
Workforce Education, Partnerships, Career Pathways
Project- STEM Guitar Project impacting education for
the past 8 years—affecting over 300 two-year
college and secondary school faculty and
thousands of students across the country by
bringing hands-on learning into the classroom.
http://www.guitarbuilding.org/
Cybersecurity- 4 Centers and 1 Large Project for cybersecurity
education, which are leaders in the National Initiative for
Cybersecurity Education and the NSA/DHS Center of Academic
Excellence program, mentoring other colleges nationwide.
22
Scale effective approaches in all
environments
Discipline-based education research
Students’ conceptual understanding
Problem solving
Use of representations
Effective instructional strategies
Plus deep knowledge about how people
learn from the social sciences
+CIRTL MOOC
Accelerate learning about learning
in a digital world
Studies of similarities and differences among different
groups of students
Longitudinal studies
Additional basic research in DBER
Interdisciplinary studies of cross-cutting concepts and
cognitive processes
Additional research on the translational role of DBER
Understanding and measuring intrapersonal and
interpersonal competencies (“noncognitive”
competencies)
http://cra.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/10/CRAEducati
onReport2015.pdf
Advances in Learning Sciences
+
Technology-enhanced Learning
Quality Learning and Learner Persistence
Everywhere
26
Learning any time, any place:
Opportunity and challenge
Challenge of disaggregated education
• Prior learning is key
• Learners motivated
by knowledge gaps
but not chasms
• Transfer is hard
• Promise of learning
progressions
1Ho, A. D., Chuang, I., Reich, J., Coleman, C., Whitehill, J., Northcutt, C., Williams, J. J., Hansen, J.,
Lopez, G., & Petersen, R. HarvardX and MITx: Two years of open online courses (HarvardX Working
Paper No. 10). doi:10.2139/ssrn.2586847
Challenges
Many college graduates skills do not
match workforce needs
Gap in college attainment between
individuals from high and low SES families
has widened in one generation
Opportunities ahead
Furthering robust research and implementation
infrastructures
Integrating practice-based evidence (Bryk) with
evidence-based practice
Learning any time, anywhere:
Supporting learners in creating coherent learning
progressions as technology creates increasingly
disaggregated systems
Networks and collaboration
Learners
Humanities
Math
Social
sciences
Practitioners
Learning
engineers
Learning
scientists
Academic
technologists
Arts & Lit
Computer
science
Information
technologists
31
Questions?
SRSinger@NSF.gov
@SusanRSinger
Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE: EHR)
NSF 15-585
Improve STEM Learning & Learning Environments:
Improve the knowledge base for defining, identifying, and innovating
effective undergraduate STEM education teaching and learning for all
NSF-supported disciplines, and foster widespread use of evidencebased resources and pedagogies in undergraduate STEM education
Build the Professional STEM Workforce for Tomorrow:
Improve the preparation of undergraduate students so they can
succeed as productive members of the future STEM workforce,
regardless of career path, and be engaged as members of a STEMliterate society
Broaden Participation & Institutional Capacity for STEM Learning:
Increase the number and diversity of undergraduate students recruited
and retained in STEM education and career pathways through
improving the evidence base for successful strategies to broaden
participation and implementation of the results of this research
Proposals should describe projects that build on available evidence
and theory, and that will generate evidence and build knowledge.