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CSU STEM Collaboratives
Request for Proposals
Key Dates and Information:
RFP Release Date: May 15, 2014
Proposal Due Date: September 15, 2014
Award Notification: October 15, 2014
Initial Meeting of Awarded Campuses: October 27-28, 2014
Maximum Sub-Grant Award Amount: $375,000 ($150,000 per year)
Sub-Grant Project Duration: 30 months (2.5 years)
Program Overview:
An award from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust will fund CSU STEM
Collaboratives to provide immersive educational STEM experiences beginning the summer before
college and continuing through the entire first year at the CSU.
The Office of the Chancellor invites proposals for STEM Collaboratives from CSU campus teams
to scale success and equity strategies for majors in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.
CSU STEM Collaboratives will incorporate and integrate high-impact,1, 2 evidence-based3
educational practices (HIPs) on three concurrent fronts:
 authentic STEM summer experiences to take place prior to fall of the freshman year;
 first-year experiences that cross departmental, disciplinary, and divisional lines to engage STEM
students through the first full academic year; and
 redesign of introductory, gateway courses critical for engagement and success in STEM.
Participating sites will intentionally integrate all three of the interventions listed above into a
comprehensive offering and join a networked CSU learning community to build an evidence-based
case for long-term changes to CSU STEM education.
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1. High-Impact Educational Practices. https://www.aacu.org/leap/hip.cfm
2. High-Impact Practices; http://teachingcommons.cdl.edu/geengage/high_impact_practices/index.html
3. Fairweather, J. (2008) Linking Evidence and Promising Practices in Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics (STEM) Undergraduate Education, http://www.nsf.gov/attachments/117803/public/Xc-Linking_Evidence--Fairweather.pdf
CSU Campuses
Bakersfield
Channel Islands
Chico
Dominguez Hills
East Bay
Fresno
Fullerton
Humboldt
Long Beach
Los Angeles
Maritime Academy
Monterey Bay
Northridge
Pomona
Sacramento
San Bernardino
San Diego
San Francisco
San José
San Luis Obispo
San Marcos
Sonoma
Stanislaus
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Call to Action
This project is designed to apply grass-roots expertise and strong, continuous evaluation to solve
two persistent problems in STEM education: student attrition and institutional inertia.
Attrition is steepest at entry, particularly for the students historically underserved by present
educational practice: ethnic minorities, those who are eligible for financial aid, and those whose
parents didn’t attend college. As reported in 20124 by the President’s Council of Advisors for
Science and Technology (PCAST), most of the students who leave STEM majors do so in the first
two years, and while in good academic standing:
“In the United States, fewer than 40% of the students who enter college with the intention of majoring
in a STEM field complete a STEM degree. Most of the students who leave STEM fields switch to
non-STEM majors after taking introductory science, math, and engineering courses. Many of the
students who leave STEM majors are capable of the work, making the retention of students who
express initial interest in STEM subjects an excellent group from which to draw some of the additional
one million STEM graduates.
“Many students who transfer out of STEM majors perform well, but they describe the teaching
methods and atmosphere in introductory STEM classes as ineffective and uninspiring.”
The same national patterns identified by PCAST appear in the CSU. Fewer than a third of the
students who entered the CSU in Fall 2005 declaring majors in STEM had earned STEM degrees six
years later. For students from under-represented minority groups (URM: Native American, AfricanAmerican, and Latino) the six-year STEM graduation rate is half that, or 17%. That is, of every six
of these students who want STEM degrees, only one will make it.5 Degree completion rates for
other at-risk and differentially-abled groups - even by gender in some STEM disciplines - are
similarly disappointing.
Related to the chronic attrition problem is one of institutional inertia. CSU faculty members have
worked for decades to improve delivery of STEM education, with repeated concentration on
gateway courses in particular. At the same time, our universities are national leaders in proven
interventions like summer bridge and first-year experiences.
Yet these innovations have defied integration and systemization at scale. Instead they survive on
grant money and the goodwill of individual faculty and administrators, making them vulnerable to
economic downturns, staffing turnover, or sheer fatigue.
The premise of this project is that the CSU already has all the incoming students and pedagogical
evidence that it needs to provide California with an ample and diverse supply of STEM graduates.
What’s missing is a new conception of the status quo, with sustained faculty and professional
development and other administrative structures that build engaging, evidence-based practices into
curriculum, policy, the business model, and day-to-day practice, so that our best work is offered
consistently, systematically, and reliably.
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4. Engage to Excel (2012) http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast-engage-to-excelfinal_feb.pdf
5. The Consortium for Student Retention Data Exchange (CSRDE), http://csrde.ou.edu/web/index.html
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Eligibility
All California State Universities are eligible to apply. For this RFP, STEM is defined as Life and
Physical Sciences, Engineering, Mathematics and Information Technology, excluding Social and
Health Sciences. STEM Collaboratives should embrace National Research Council
recommendations that STEM learning incorporate common practices, crosscutting concepts, and
disciplinary core ideas by which STEM students “investigate, model, communicate, and explain the
natural and designed world.”
Proposal Review Criteria:
1. Proposals must provide a high-level problem statement supported by data. The problem
statement should capture the campus STEM student status quo. In answer, proposals must
describe a strategy to improve STEM education with a comprehensive offering that integrates a
STEM-focused summer experience, continuing into a related first-year experiences and redesign
of introductory STEM gateway courses.
Note: Any interventions proposed in addition to these three should include a strategy for
connecting them to the first three and measuring their efficacy, either because the
campus already has evidence of effectiveness or because it would do so as part of the
STEM Collaborative project.
2. Successful proposals will provide evidence the campus is familiar with and planning to use highimpact practices associated with summer STEM experiences, first-year experiences and
pedagogies to engage and retain all STEM students. Special attention should be paid to closing
achievement gaps between different groups of students, especially those who are
underrepresented in STEM disciplines, Pell-eligible and first-generation to attend college.
Proposals will include baseline data demonstrating past success designing and offering effective
component HIPs to demonstrate campus readiness for this comprehensive redesign work.
Other precursor evidence, demonstrating readiness for sustained change, might include receipt
of NIH MARC, RISE, NSF TUES/CCLI (including participation in the Council on
Undergraduate Research CCLI II or III programs), NSF STEP or similar education-focused
grants. That is, proposals should feature existing programs and ongoing work that might benefit
from integration efforts supported by STEM Collaboratives.
3. Proposals must include a plan to collect data and information to monitor and evaluate the
STEM Collaborative programming and its effect on student learning and campus culture
compared to the baseline status upon proposal submission.
4. Proposed STEM Collaboratives must provide evidence of and deliberate plans for deep, broad
and collaborative campus involvement, to include (as relevant to proposed activities) senior
leadership from administration and faculty governance organizations, student leadership,
multiple divisions and departments, institutional research, part-time as well as full-time STEM
faculty, and staff familiar with business processes, academic transcripting, orientation and
advising. While we recognize that not all proposals would depend on participation from all the
parties listed here, reviewers will be looking for evidence of broad and inclusive collaboration,
since the need for integration is a central premise of this project.
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5. Successful proposals will communicate a sense of urgency and describe how proposed strategies
will lead to a new, sustainable and improved status quo, by building on prior work and ongoing
efforts (possibly from other funding streams) and integrating them in a scaling-up process so
that all students majoring in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math will be impacted. The
comprehensive offering should be designed to maximize the number of STEM students
involved during the grant period, if all STEM majors will not yet be impacted.
6. Proposals must describe faculty development activities to build expertise in current, effective
pedagogies (evidence-based6 or “scientific teaching”7), methods to better engage with students in
and outside the classroom, and dispositional learning. Proposals must describe how such
practices will become the norm among STEM instructional staff. Proposals should feature
ongoing efforts in this area, including faculty participation at National Academies/HHMI or
AAC&U summer institutes, for instance.
7. Proposed projects must include a plan to evaluate, publish, share with and disseminate work and
program outcomes to CSU colleagues, both within their campus communities and system-wide.
Proposal reviewers will look for an appetite for deep and lasting change, in structures of funding,
ongoing faculty and professional development, cross-divisional and cross-departmental
relationships, and evidence-based pedagogy.
What Funded Universities Will Do
One of the project’s guiding hypotheses is that a more seamless, sequential approach to the period
between admission and the start of the second year will promote improved student persistence,
deeper subject-matter learning, and more dispositional learning such as resilience, determination, and
grit, while also reducing achievement gaps and improving persistence into subsequent terms. A goal
of the project is to test the assumption that three interrelated interventions together can improve
student learning and can help increase persistence in STEM majors, while also reducing student
achievement gaps. Of particular interest is the campus culture and administrative support needed to
effectively integrate multiple high-impact practices, to coordinate the “hand-off” from summer into
fall between staff and faculty instructors, and to build wraparound first-year interventions involving
student affairs into day-to-day classroom practice in introductory courses. The Office of the
Chancellor will build a network of STEM Collaboratives to share best practices and lessons learned,
support student-level data collection and convene campus teams annually to facilitate discussions
about changing the STEM student experience. Funded CSU universities will:
1. Integrate a STEM summer experience, first-year experience, and gateway course redesign
into a coherent, intentional comprehensive experience for all students majoring in STEM.
The first six months of the grant can be used for planning, but new programming must be offered
to STEM students starting in the summer 2015. It is expected that administrative structures to build
engaging, evidence-based practices into curriculum policy, the business model and day-to-day
practice will continue to evolve and iterate through the remainder of the grant period. Revisions
based on campus assessment of “what worked” in the first instance of programming will be
possible, in consultation with system-wide project leadership.
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6. Discipline-Based Education Research: Understanding and Improving Learning in Undergraduate Science and Engineering
http://sites.nationalacademies.org/DBASSE/BOSE/DBASSE_072106
7. Handelsman, Ebert-May, Beichner, Bruns, Chang, DeHaan, Gentile, Lauffer, Stewart, Tilghman & Wood (2004)
Scientific Teaching. Science 304: 521-522.
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2. Use project resources to organize and scale faculty development and professional
development to effect continuous improvement of STEM education in multiple departments and
divisions, particularly in gateway courses, as integrated into a broader institutional approach.
3. Identify a campus-based Project Coordinator and key team members for the duration of
the project. The STEM Collaboratives Project Coordinator (this may or may not be the Principal
Investigator) will facilitate faculty and professional development, cross-divisional communication,
outreach to stakeholders within and beyond the campus community, interactions with the Office of
the Chancellor, and submissions of research data to the project evaluators. The campus team will
host and organize annual, campus-wide workshops or seminars for STEM faculty and staff to review
data and progress of the STEM Collaborative project. The conditions of the grant require that salary
support for Project Coordinators taper off over the duration of the grant as the campus absorbs the
role into the new status quo.
Note: CSU STEM Collaboratives will be eligible for AmeriCorps Volunteers In Service To
America (VISTA) members from July 2015 through July 2016, through a grant from the
Corporation for National and Community Service to the Office of the Chancellor. CSU
STEM VISTA members can assist Project Coordinators with scaling of the project work and
capability building on campus.
4. Join a networked learning community with other participating CSU campuses. The
purpose of STEM Collaboratives is to surface and consolidate best educational practices around the
CSU system, identifying common elements and building a case for taking them to consistent systemwide scale. Doing so will require ongoing communication among all participating campuses, and a
willingness to learn from – and adopt – each other’s strategies. Campus project teams funded by this
grant will attend and make presentations at recurring annual meetings at the Chancellor’s office in
Long Beach. The Chancellor’s Office will provide lodging and meals during meetings.
5. Contribute to the project’s research and evaluation and disseminate campus findings.
Although the CSU expects work during this grant to produce a larger and more diverse pool of
STEM students, in the long run the goal is for these changes to last. That is, the work of STEM
Collaboratives is evaluative as much as it is programmatic. Each university that participates will
commit to making available to project leadership student-record-level data. In addition funded
campuses should be prepared to share learning metrics or evaluations related to STEM
Collaboratives component-level and course-level offerings. Of particular importance is the
commitment to contribute to, support, and guide enhancements to the CSU Student Success
Dashboard, as developed by the Graduation Initiative. Modifications to the Dashboard will
aggregate records of student participation in STEM Collaboratives, including involvement in
particular interventions and migration into and out of STEM majors. CSU STEM Collaboratives
will share first-hand accounts of work under this grant after the project has ended, for example at
national conferences, in publications, and in particular with the CSU’s other institutions, Trustees,
and central administration.
Campuses are expected to work with the external evaluator to disseminate surveys to faculty, staff
and students, help set up focus groups drawn from participating faculty, students, staff and
administrators, and to arrange for project staff and key faculty participate in interviews. We expect
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the frequent, intentional use of real-time data on campuses to influence modifications in program
design, and to model data-based decision making.
Lastly, each campus will conduct evaluations of each program component implemented as part of
the STEM Collaboratives and report the results of these evaluations to the external evaluator and
system office.
6. Submit annual progress reports and quarterly milestone updates with budget invoices.
Further information will be provided in the memorandum of understanding with awarded campuses.
7. Contribute $2,500/year for each of three years to the project’s central administration, out
of campus funds separate from those in the grant award, as a campus “match” and indication of
institutional support.
Proposal Guidelines:
Proposals must consist of these five parts:
1. Cover page listing campus, project title, Principal Investigator, administrative point person (or
Project Coordinator, if known), and contact information for all individuals listed.
2. Narrative statement of 6,000 to 7,500 words.
The narrative should include the following section headings:
a) A high-level problem statement that provides a cogent account of current STEM education on
campus. Supporting narrative should include an institution-level inventory of current
interventions focused on STEM education and underserved student success across academic
and student affairs divisions. CSU campuses are already running multiple programs and
projects along these lines, and reviewers will want to know which programs may overlap,
which populations of STEM majors are apparently well-served, and who is left out.
Supporting text should include baseline student-level data in gateway STEM courses, and
completion rates disaggregated by demographic groups.
b) An integrated strategy to intentionally address the high-level problem statement, including a
STEM summer experience, leading to an integrated first-year experience and redesign of
introductory STEM Gateway Courses. The supporting narrative should include a diagnosis
of the main opportunities for improvement and how a concerted, integrated approach might
improve STEM student persistence on your campus. This part of the narrative should detail
your proposed programming work, address the criteria for review enumerated above, and
align with your submitted budget (item 4, described below).
c) A scaling-up process, including timelines and milestones, so that all students majoring in Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Math on campus will be impacted. Supporting narrative text
should include a plan and milestones the campus will use to achieve scale. Plans for faculty
and staff development activities to provide training in current, effective pedagogies,
dispositional learning and high-impact practices should be part of this section.
d) An evaluation plan to monitor and evaluate the proposed STEM Collaborative programming.
Narrative text should include a candid evaluation of current capacity for institutional
research and data collection, and a projection of how the routines of data collection and
data-driven decision-making will continue after the period of the grant. Proposals should
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include plans to evaluate student success in component-level and course-level STEM
Collaboratives offerings and their efficacy, both individually and in combination.
3. A roster of campus faculty, staff, and administrators who will participate in your
Collaborative. The roster should identify a Principal Investigator (PI) who will oversee the project
and supervise the Project Coordinator. The PI and co-PIs’ CVs should be included as an appendix
to the proposal.
4. A budget for each program period. Awards will average $150,000 per year.
a) STEM Collaboratives Project Time Frame:
Period 1: November 2014-August 2015
Period 2: September 2015-August 2016
Period 3: September 2016 – December 2016
b) Budget Narrative: Applicants must provide an overall budget narrative for the entire program
period. Budget narrative should be organized in the same categorical order as the Budget
Form (template provided in Appendix A). Please provide information for all items so
reviewers can understand the basis for your request. Additional cost match beyond the
required $2,500 is not required, but can be included. For example, you may describe any
additional cash and/or in-kind contributions from public or private sources that will support
the STEM Collaborative.
c) Budget Form: Once the budget narrative has been completed, transfer the appropriate
amounts to the Budget Form.
5. A signature page agreeing to the terms of this RFP and the details of the campus proposal,
signed by:
President
Vice President, Academic Affairs
Vice President, Student Affairs
Dean of the relevant college
Principal Investigator
Letters of support from others in campus leadership, such as faculty governance, STEM faculty and
heads of student success programs, can be included as an appendix to the proposal.
Support for Proposal Writers
The CSU Office of the Chancellor will host two webinars and an in-person meeting between now
and the proposal deadline, to help campus teams conceptualize and organize their work.
Summer Kickoff Meeting, June 17, 2014, CSU Dominguez Hills. We will host an all-day
meeting for up to six representatives from each CSU campus preparing a STEM Collaboratives
proposal. The meeting will include an account of the project’s assumptions, influences, and goals;
guest speakers; more information about the CSU STEM VISTA program; and a demonstration of
the CSU Student Success Dashboard and other reporting tools. Between presentations will be
blocks of open time for teams to develop their proposals; by the end of the day, participants will
leave with a draft project proposal that teams may draw on to identify data, support and
participation needed on campus for final proposal submissions.
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On-line briefings and Q&A meetings, August 5 and 13, 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. Project leadership
will host two system-wide webinars to give proposal writers the chance to ask questions and adjust
their approach. This is an opportunity for participation from team members who may not be
available for the in-person meeting.
Regularly updated on-line presence and newsletter. The CSU is hiring a Senior Project
Manager of STEM Collaboratives, who will create a listserv and post project news and updates to
calstate.edu/engage.
Submission Instructions:
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Electronic proposals are due on Monday, September 15, 2014, by 5:00 pm, sent to Ken
O’Donnell, at kodonnell@calstate.edu. The cover page, signature page and letters of support
may be scanned and emailed.
Multiple proposals from one campus are not allowed.
Proposals may include a request for up to $375,000. Grant funds may be used from
November 1, 2014 – December 31, 2016.
Applicants will be notified of funding decisions by October 15, 2014.