8
Final Reflections
The symposium was structured to allow participants to pause at various points to reflect on how panel discussions built on each other and take stock of how they might fit together into an agenda for action. Participants were invited, for example, to participate in small breakout session discussions and to imagine and write stories about the future. The symposium began to wrap up with a panel of several participants who were invited to offer their own ideas for sharing the ideas discussed at the symposium more widely to the broader higher education community and beyond. Final thoughts were offered by Robin Wright as a representative of the National Science Foundation, the project sponsor, and from the committee co-chairs, Annette Parker and Barbara Schaal.
EXAMPLES OF PARTICIPANT STORIES
Symposium participants were offered the opportunity to engage in multiple exercises to discuss and then write stories imagining the future of undergraduate STEM students in 2040. Suggested story topics for group writing included reenvisioning courses; internships, cooperatives, and work experience; capstone and integrative experiences; informal and continuing education; and cocurricular and service-learning projects. Committee member Leanne Chukoskie shared some of the insights from the stories generated at the symposium. The STEM students of 2040, she began, will not necessarily come straight from high school, and the prominence of lifelong learning and solving problems relevant to the communities in which students live permeated many of the stories. These students of the
future, she added, will be seeking missions, not majors, and will be looking for blending opportunities that meld traditional higher education learning opportunities with paid opportunities in industry. Coursework will be more competency-based and will be built with the mindset that many learners will not have the time to be full-time, traditional students. Competencies in these stories reflected both national standards and local, community needs, and all learners will have access to a success coach so that they can make sure that their learning remains a priority regardless of other things that are going on in their life. Higher education will focus on the goal of moving people quickly from learning into the workforce.
Committee member Nicholas Horton said that he heard shared ideas about how students in 2040 will experience creative assessments that measure critical thinking and learning in context rather than the ability to memorize facts. Courses, then, will be collaborative and feature problem-based learning and experiential activities that cross disciplines and will require teamwork. Internships, cooperatives, capstone projects, and practica will provide students with multiple integrative experiences as means for developing the capacities needed in the workplace. Achieving this vision requires faculty who are willing enough to engage with other disciplines within their institutions and within industry. The story writers, said Horton, also envisioned a type of continuing education that would be more flexible, independent, and engaged with the community.
PARTICIPANT PERSPECTIVES: BUILDING ON CURRENT INNOVATIONS
Several symposium participants contributed their individual perspectives on how undergraduate STEM might look in 2040. Topics included imagining the world of 2040, transforming the student learning experience, redesigning pathways for undergraduate STEM education, systemic change in higher education, and envisioning the future role of faculty and staff. Two examples of stories can be found in Boxes 8-1 and 8-2, others can be found on the symposium webpage.1
The moderators created a word cloud summarizing key ideas and themes from the individual stories (Figure 8-1) and also offered reflections on the story writing exercise. Commenting on the stories she read, planning committee member Lynn Andrea Stein said she was happy that education, learning, and students appear in the middle of the word cloud, and pleased that the words surrounding them—whole-person, interdisciplinary, flexible, inclusive, collaborative, partnering, work, justice, and individualized—are
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1https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/10-21-2020/imagining-the-future-of-undergraduate-stem-education-symposium.
themes expressed repeatedly throughout the symposium. She also noted that joy, immersion, and curiosity were new ideas coming out of the discussions. “As STEM professionals, I think we all like to believe those are at the center of the education that we envision for our students,” said Stein.
Stein said there is an opportunity to create an undergraduate STEM educational experience that recognizes individual students where they are, takes a system approach, and changes the world by changing the educational system. At the same time, another theme Stein heard throughout the conversations of the past 2 days was that when making a change to one piece of the system, other parts of the system tend to pull it back to the status quo. “In some ways, some of the changes we have been talking about in the last 2 days we have been talking about for a pretty long time, and this may be a moment where there is enough disruption in the system that we can finally begin to rethink the system itself and not the practices of particular components within the system,” she said.
Stein reiterated the message of being cautious not to introduce changes that can introduce new inequities, yet she also noted the optimism that this is a moment to begin building a different kind of STEM education, one
that is not about ivory-tower science, isolated ideas, or intellect, but instead about the ways in which ideas of STEM, as well as the arts, humanities, social sciences, business, and entrepreneurial thinking, come together to solve society’s big problems.
Ortiz then reflected on the discussions by noting that society today is increasingly rife with social inequities, planetary perils, and the realization that the collective impact of humans threatens life on earth and is transforming societies and ecosystems. “We have seen that while science and technology has contributed enormous benefits to humanity, it is simultaneously entangled with and has contributed to all of these challenges that we face,” said Ortiz.
Having embarked on the effort needed to reimagine a more equitable and sustainable future, a theme that comes through, she said, is the need to acknowledge, interrogate, and strive to understand the historical context, root causes, and systemic structures that underpin the scientific and technological enterprise, as well as the institutions of higher learning that serve as its foundation. “Inequity in higher education, including access and quality and the nature of education, is a growing challenge, and as we take on the bold endeavor of tackling these enduring problems of humanity, we also must be reflective of humanity,” Ortiz remarked, adding that while the discussions on equity have emphasized a lack of representation, this is a surface symptom of much deeper root causes, she added.
Planning committee member Christine Ortiz of MIT and Station1 then offered a few ideas that could elevate the best parts of human nature within STEM to lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness. The first step, she said, is to interrogate what foundational knowledge and the canon of individual discipline actually means and to integrate respect for different ways of knowing into the core foundations and canon of disciplines. “We need to reflect upon the flaws and intentional approaches to reform underlying mindsets and values in our institutions,” said Ortiz. “This includes concepts of meritocracy, rigor, excellence, deficit, frames, flaws in the pipeline metaphor, technological determination, and even innovation and disruption.”
She concluded her remarks by noting the importance of understanding the perils, scenarios, and potential futures that are more inequitable, elevate racism, and are mechanical and dehumanizing. “We have to realize that our choices of pathways are not mutually exclusive, that there is promise and peril in every pathway.” Her suggestion was to have another symposium that would look at a dystopian version of the past 2 days.
Next, planning committee co-chair Annette Parker of South Central College shared her view of the symposium’s discussions from her perspective as a Community College president. She reflected on the first commissioned paper presented by Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux (see Chapter 3) and considered Malcom-Piqueux’s research on equity and the importance of
creating a future that supports diversity and equity reflecting the diverse nation the United States has become as very powerful. Parker pointed out that today’s undergraduate STEM education system does not reflect the diversity of the population and she also noted the need to create a flexible ecosystem for learning that takes into account career transitions and lifelong learning and provides on- and off-ramps that empower rather than impede students in using their diversity and human potential to deal with real-world problems in their communities. Undergraduate STEM education, she added, must be multidisciplinary, include critical thinking and active learning, and deal with societal issues, and accreditation programs need to support this new vision for undergraduate STEM education.
To conclude the day, planning committee co-chair Barbara Schaal of Washington University in St. Louis offered some of the ideas from the two days of discussion that she found interesting. The first was about integrating neuroscience into education to better understand the biological basis of implicit bias and a host of other behaviors and to leverage neuroplasticity to effect changes in behavior. She noted how the institutions that serve those from groups that are underrepresented in STEM today—Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs) and tribal colleges, specifically—are very good at taking students from incredibly diverse backgrounds, working with and supporting them, and seeing them through to matriculation. She reiterated the idea that these institutions have lessons from which the rest of the undergraduate STEM education system could benefit. Schaal stressed that admitting someone to college or university is not the same as educating them.
The idea of an ecosystem of learning was particularly interesting to Schaal, as was the need to operate this ecosystem using democratized data and information. This ecosystem should be personalized in the way that Instagram and TikTok are, and in fact, she suggested that those social media platforms could hold lessons for the undergraduate STEM education community. The ecosystem of learning will depend heavily on the Internet, raising the importance of providing broadband access and the tools to use it to all Americans—rural and urban—if equity is the goal, as well as on the availability of effective educational modules of the type seen in well-resourced schools. She also commented on the need to make undergraduate STEM education relevant to students and involve them in solving problems that are important in their communities
POSSIBLITIES FOR THE FUTURE
As a concluding activity, the planning committee asked educators who had participated in the symposium to summarize the lessons they drew from the discussions and activities and to offer suggestions for sharing these insights more widely (see Box 8-3).
Kern said that one big change he would like to see is to have the ability to customize education to meet the student where they are and to have a pathway that works for them and their goals. He noted that institutions of higher education will have to get innovative with how they use technology to enable adaptable timelines and more flexible curricula, while the United States is going to have to find new and sustainable ways to fund schools and pay for education that do not rely on the semester system or financially penalize students who do not follow the traditional timeline. “There are strong social justice implications because it gives an opening to repair the damage done by a racially and financially biased school and employment system to help students meet their potential and use their skills to best effect,” said Kern. He also noted that students today want to make a difference. “Yes, they need a job that pays the bills, but it is not enough. They want to rebuild the world, so we should give them the tools,” he said.
When COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed, he would like to see several changes in undergraduate STEM education, starting with programs that adopt more flexible curricula. This is something schools could do immediately, and though it would require more personalized mentoring, this is something that most Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Community Colleges already have in place and from which other institutions could
learn, said Kern. Also needed, he said, is better-coordinated transfers between schools so that students do not lose credits, time, and money. He also called for the undergraduate STEM education community to stop focusing on “major” institutions because they are not doing a good job with students from minoritized populations. “They will often use money to attract students who would otherwise maybe go to some of these smaller institutions, but they do not have the outcomes to show that they are actually supporting those students the way that some of our smaller institutions could do,” said Kern.
The conversation with employers will need to change as well, he said. “We cannot become job-training services, given how variable the workplace and the future in general will be. We need to be focused on widely applicable transferable skills, and if industry wants this training, then maybe that happens on their end,” Kern stated. “Much of the inequality that we see our students struggling with was caused by the very industry structures that we were sometimes asked to support, and we need to ask ourselves if it is ethical to consider supporting those structures.”
Ph.D. candidate Chew of the University of Virginia said he hopes that over the next 20 years, there is a paradigm shift in assessing learning. Such a shift is needed to enable more team-based active learning experiences, allow students to customize their learning pathways, and address social justice concerns. He noted that there has been a substantial body of research on assessment from which the undergraduate STEM education community can draw. When COVID-19 restrictions end, Chew would like to see more research on how to assess faculty teaching skills and the reasons why instructors prefer particular types of assessment.
A key lesson that excited Cordelia Ontiveros, the emerita dean of the Engineering at Cal Poly Pomona, is that undergraduate STEM education is becoming more socially and culturally aware, equitable, and inclusive. She is also excited about a future where multiple, valid pathways are available for students to pursue an undergraduate STEM education; their background and experience are considered to be valid, relevant, and important, students are accepted where they are; and diverse students can experience a sense of belonging, community, and acknowledgment that they matter and count as competent STEM students.
Ontiveros said that when the COVID-19 restrictions end, she plans to use the structures and contents of this symposium in her classes. She said the symposium has highlighted multiple ways of interacting with presenters and attendees, and she thinks these different avenues—articles available to read in advance, presentations and discussion, small group breakouts around specific questions, shared documents for recording thoughts, discussion boards for sharing and responding to ideas—will allow for a better learning experience for students, one that involves them more in their own education.
Patrick Shabram of Front Range Community College said he is most excited about the increasing number of inclusive internships and research experiences that target or at least encourage participation by students from underrepresented groups as well as first- and second-year students, including Community College students. “Not only do these programs give students real-world experience, they often solidify the students’ decisions to pursue a STEM major in the first place, which is why it is so important that we reach these students early,” said Shabram. An important development he sees is that many of these opportunities are paid experiences, which is important because it does not place socioeconomic limitations on students. He hopes to see more government agencies, more nonprofits, and more private companies hiring Community College and first- and second-year students into paid internships. Shabram noted that he was going to take the COVID-19 restrictions as an opportunity to rethink everything about the way he organizes his classes.
Turning to the second group of four panelists, planning committee member Ryan Kelsey of the Markle Foundation asked the panelists to discuss what excites them most about how undergraduate STEM education will change by 2040 and what they see as good ways of disseminating the lessons from this symposium. James Madison University’s Kolvoord said he was excited about the continuing movement to place the student and problem-solving at the center of undergraduate STEM education, rather than faculty and the discipline. This change is already allowing the system to focus on all learners, particularly those who have not been the center of attention to date. He wonders, though, what the catalyst will be to make this change spread throughout higher education, particularly after the pandemic is over.
Regarding dissemination, he would like to see the focus be on Community Colleges and HBCUs rather than on the few institutions that today get most of the attention. There also needs to be outreach to legislators and other federal and state government officials because they make budget decisions that affect what can be done on campus. “Most of us, sadly, are not beneficiaries of billion-dollar endowments, and it is going to take resources to make some of these changes,” said Kolvoord. Without the support of stakeholders, he worries that the system will act like a rubber band that will stretch but then snap back to where it was.
University of Southern California’s Parr said she is excited about shifting the role of instructors from being content deliverers to becoming guides who show how to use content effectively. “Our students have all of the knowledge for general chemistry in their pocket on their cell phone,” said Parr. “My job now has shifted from giving them that content into how they use it and apply it to real-world problems.” She agreed with Kolvoord that outreach to stakeholders is important, as is the creation of spaces to
bring people together for sharing information. For her, bringing together all the stakeholders who affect undergraduate education, including those researchers who study best practices in education, is an important step toward changing the culture of undergraduate STEM education. These communities of learning could be an effective dissemination mechanism.
University of Alabama’s Steele, who evaluates programs for undergraduate learning, said she would like to see education that is equitable and gives every student the same opportunity to success when they get to college. Achieving that goal means meeting students where they are, perhaps by partnering with K–12 schools to help provide opportunities for all schools. As an example, she compared the K–12 school where her son goes versus the one her nephew attends. One of the schools sends the kids to science camp, while the other school cannot afford textbooks for every child. She also called on research-oriented universities to do a better job helping students embrace their identities in higher education.
In terms of dissemination, Steele, who is a science education researcher, agreed with Parr that networking and learning communities that go beyond academic silos and discipline-specific meetings will be critical for getting best practices into the hands of more instructors. Workshops and professional development opportunities for faculty are also needed. She would also like to see more partnerships with the business community and the larger community in which students live to better understand what they expect from students.
Mica Estrada of the University of California, San Francisco noted that historically, higher education has used tests and grades to identify talent who can contribute to expanding and strengthening the national economy. She would like to see a shift from identifying talent to developing talent equitably, and this talent development would include imparting not only foundational knowledge but also metacognitive abilities and human virtues. A second shift would be to turn from focusing on national economic growth to the well-being of people and the planet. In her view, that shift would move the system away from exploiting people, which she said happens in academia. Such a shift would help students grow and contribute equitably to the common good and would begin to decolonize academia and make space for other ways of knowing, something that is essential for achieving equity in academia.
As a communications strategist, Estrada said the first step in any dissemination effort has to be to understand the different audiences, including those at institutions of higher education who control faculty reward structures. Other important audiences include business, community organizations, and politicians, as well as accreditation agencies, the annual U.S. News & World Report ranking of colleges and universities, and funders. The second step is then to think about content and stories about people to
illustrate that content. “If you want to shift norms, I would lead with concrete stories and concrete data that demonstrate the most efficacious things we have been talking about,” said Estrada. At the same time, she said, it is important to focus on what is known as WIIFM (what’s in it for me)? The other two important considerations are the mode for delivering the message and the duration of the messaging activities.
Her final point was to convey to stakeholders that the necessary paradigm shift is not concerned with money but instead with the well-being and health of the academic community, the local community, and the environment. If administrators are the audience, for example, inform them that these changes are needed to benefit the well-being and health of everyone on campus. “I would start that discussion and let them generate ideas on how they would make that shift happen,” Estrada said in closing the session.
CLOSING REMARKS
The symposium closed with reflections from the sponsor, Robin Wright, director of the Division on Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the committee co-chairs, Annette Parker and Barbara Schaal.
Wright noted that many of those attending the symposium have worked hard at improving undergraduate STEM education for decades and that much has changed over the past 20 years. The incremental changes that have occurred, though, are not going to be enough to propel the vision of undergraduate STEM education that emerged from this symposium.
Wright pointed out some basic truths that emerged from the symposium. First, there is a need to measure what really matters in ways that are fair, equitable, and authentic to STEM from grading lab work to measuring the quality of the curriculum. Measuring what matters means stating what success in a STEM course, curriculum, or discipline means. One critical measure is a determination about who is included and excluded from STEM. “To achieve the inclusion, equity, and diversity that we have been talking about, yearning for, and desperately need, we have to measure the impacts of STEM education beyond averages to their impacts on groups of students and on individuals,” said Wright.
The second basic truth is that undergraduate STEM education must empower students, and empowerment needs to be a defining feature of the undergraduate STEM education system of the future. It was noted multiple times during the symposium that students need to work on relevant projects right from the start and not wait until they earn credentials before starting to change the world. The STEM education of 2040 needs to be a place where students can begin to become the change makers, the world improvers, and the solution developers that the world needs, said Wright.
NSF, said Wright, is ready to support efforts to turn the vision for undergraduate STEM education painted at this symposium into a reality. She challenged the symposium participants to think big, to envision large-scale efforts that could propel undergraduate STEM education forward toward goals that enable all learners to be STEM-knowledgeable and able to seek STEM careers. “What large-scale efforts would bring the country from the level it is now to provide the diversity of thought and talent to achieve the future we would like to see in 2040?” she asked, adding that the nation cannot wait for solutions. “The needs are too urgent and the consequences of business as usual are too dire,” she said in concluding her remarks.
Parker agreed with Wright that big changes are needed and said that the paper from Malcom-Piqueux affected her more than anything she heard in that it talked about how the legislation that was intended to help all of the nation’s citizens instead had produced unintended consequences that did not make education equitable so that all students could succeed. In terms of making big changes, the ability of colleges and universities across the country to switch rapidly from in-person education to remote education shows that the nation’s institutions of higher education can make big changes when they put their minds to it. She then noted, too, that the social unrest that occurred during the summer of 2020 has brought to the fore issues of equity, inclusion, and justice, and illustrated clearly that students will not tolerate inequitable situations anymore.
Coming from her perspective as a college president, Parker said that the accreditation process is often looked at as something that limits change, but her institution’s recent experience with accreditation suggests that there are opportunities to make big changes if the accreditation agencies are clued into what is coming in the future. She suggested, in fact, that accreditation agencies be on the list of organizations that the symposium’s dissemination efforts include.
Returning to Malcom-Piqueux’s paper, Parker said that it helped her understand that throughout the nation’s history, not all Black students such as herself made it through the system, and it was due to unintentional roadblocks. “What we do in the future,” said Parker, “we cannot make that mistake again. We need to understand where those limits are and how everybody gets on the train.”
In her summary, Schaal highlighted another story from a symposium participant who pointed out that everything that happens in higher education is contained within a system that has a structure with advantages and disadvantages that are clearly defined along racial lines. It is therefore essential to disrupt and dismantle that system to benefit future students while at the same time continuing to educate today’s students. “We are not just building a plane, we are building it while we are flying it,” said
Schaal. On a final note, she added that there are bright lights in the system, particularly regarding how many HBCUs and tribal universities are doing a good job working with students and moving them along an educational journey in a very individual way using dynamic structures that focus on equitable learning and outcomes.
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