Departmental Action Teams: A Five-Year Update On A Model For Sustainable Change, Daniel L. Reinholz, Mary E. Pilgrim, Karen Falkenberg, Courtney Ngai, Gina M. Quan, Sarah Wise, Chris Geanious, Joel Corbo, Noah Finkelstein
Oct 2018
Departmental Action Teams: A Five-Year Update On A Model For Sustainable Change, Daniel L. Reinholz, Mary E. Pilgrim, Karen Falkenberg, Courtney Ngai, Gina M. Quan, Sarah Wise, Chris Geanious, Joel Corbo, Noah Finkelstein
Gina Quan
Fostering sustainable improvements in undergraduate education remains a formidable challenge. To address this challenge, our team has developed the Departmental Action Team (DAT) model. DATs are small working groups of faculty, students, and staff, that work collaboratively to envision, plan, develop, and build sustainable structures in their department. To support the uptake of such structures, DATs collect and analyze data to reflect on the root causes of an issue, which they use to shift beliefs, values, and practices within their context. This paper provides a five-year status report on the DAT project. We describe the history of the model, its …
Research On University Faculty Member's Reasoning About How Departments Change, Gina M. Quan, Joel Corbo, Courtney Ngai, Daniel L. Reinholz, Mary E. Pilgrim
Jul 2018
Research On University Faculty Member's Reasoning About How Departments Change, Gina M. Quan, Joel Corbo, Courtney Ngai, Daniel L. Reinholz, Mary E. Pilgrim
Gina Quan
Research on institutional change says that effective change agents are able to flexibly reason with multiple models for change, depending on their local context and their goals. However, little is known about what it looks like for individuals to draw on and reason with different change models in-the-moment. Within interviews, we invited STEM faculty to discuss specific changes in their department and the process of change in general. This work is part of an ongoing study to understand how to support departmental change through Departmental Action Teams (DATs). Our preliminary analyses suggest that faculty's ideas about change are highly varied and …
Research On University Faculty Members Reasoning About How Departments Change, Gina M. Quan, Joel Corbo, Courtney Ngai, Daniel L. Reinholz, Mary E. Pilgrim
Jul 2018
Research On University Faculty Members Reasoning About How Departments Change, Gina M. Quan, Joel Corbo, Courtney Ngai, Daniel L. Reinholz, Mary E. Pilgrim
Gina Quan
Research on institutional change says that effective change agents are able to flexibly reason with multiple
perspectives on change, depending on their local context and their goals. However, little is known about what
this flexible reasoning looks like. In this exploratory work, we conducted and analyzed interviews in which
faculty discussed departmental change. This work is part of an ongoing study to understand how to support
departmental change through Departmental Action Teams (DATs). Our preliminary analyses suggest that faculty
have multiple context-dependent ways to reason about change. This work will lead to a better understanding of
how productive lines of …
Externalizing The Core Principles Of The Departmental Action Team (Dat) Model, Joel Corbo, Gina M. Quan, Karen Falkenberg, Christopher Geanious, Courtney Ngai, Mary E. Pilgrim, Daniel L. Reinholz, Sarah Wise
Jul 2018
Externalizing The Core Principles Of The Departmental Action Team (Dat) Model, Joel Corbo, Gina M. Quan, Karen Falkenberg, Christopher Geanious, Courtney Ngai, Mary E. Pilgrim, Daniel L. Reinholz, Sarah Wise
Gina Quan
Departmental Action Teams (DATs) are departmentally-based working groups of faculty, students, and staff
aimed at achieving sustained departmental change related to undergraduate education. DATs have been conceptualized and are facilitated by members of our project team based on a set of Core Principles. These principles serve both as guides in the design of DATs and targets for the kinds of culture we aspire to create through our facilitation. In this paper, we describe our Core Principles, including theoretical underpinnings and a brief implementation example for each. We argue that articulating principles is a critical component of externalizing a
complex change …
Successes And Challenges In Supporting Undergraduate Peer Educators To Notice And Respond To Equity Considerations Within Design Teams, Chandra Anne Turpen, Ayush Gupta, Jennifer Radoff, Andrew Elby, Hannah Sabo, Gina M. Quan
Dec 2017
Successes And Challenges In Supporting Undergraduate Peer Educators To Notice And Respond To Equity Considerations Within Design Teams, Chandra Anne Turpen, Ayush Gupta, Jennifer Radoff, Andrew Elby, Hannah Sabo, Gina M. Quan
Gina Quan
We describe and analyze our efforts to support Learning Assistants (LAs)—undergraduate peer
educators who simultaneously take a 3-credit pedagogy course—in fostering equitable team
dynamics and collaboration within a project-based engineering design course. Tonso and
others have shown that (a) inequities can “live” in mundane interactions such as those among
students within design teams and (b) those inequities both reflect and (re)produce broader
cultural patterns and narratives (e.g. Wolfe & Powell, 2009; Tonso, 1996, 2006a, 2006b;
McLoughlin, 2005). LAs could be well-positioned to notice and potentially disrupt inequitable
patterns of participation within design teams. In this paper, we explore (1) How …
The Access Network: Bringing Together Student Leaders To Support Equity Programs, Gina M. Quan, Chandra A. Turpen
Dec 2017
The Access Network: Bringing Together Student Leaders To Support Equity Programs, Gina M. Quan, Chandra A. Turpen
Gina Quan
The Access Network consists of nine university-based programs from across the country working towards a more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and accessible STEM community. Each program places a strong emphasis on undergraduate and graduate student leadership, and some programs are entirely student-led. One component of Access is an annual Assembly, which brings together representatives from current and potential Access sites to update each other, share lessons learned, support each other in overcoming challenges, participate in professional development, and build relationships with others interested in promoting justice in STEM education. The Assembly is co-designed by a team of student leaders from each …
Connecting Self-Efficacy And Views About Nature Of Science In Undergraduate Research Experiences, Gina M. Quan, Andrew Elby
Nov 2016
Connecting Self-Efficacy And Views About Nature Of Science In Undergraduate Research Experiences, Gina M. Quan, Andrew Elby
Gina Quan
Undergraduate research can support students’ more central participation in physics. We analyze markers of two coupled shifts in participation: changes in students’ views about the nature of science coupled to shifts in self-efficacy toward physics research. Students in the study worked with faculty and graduate student mentors on research projects while also participating in a seminar where they learned about research and reflected on their experiences. In classroom discussions and in clinical interviews, students described gaining more nuanced views about the nature of science, specifically related to who can participate in research and what participation in research looks like. This …
Attending To Scientific Practices Within Undergraduate Research Experiences, Gina M. Quan, Chandra Anne Turpen, Andrew Elby
Jun 2016
Attending To Scientific Practices Within Undergraduate Research Experiences, Gina M. Quan, Chandra Anne Turpen, Andrew Elby
Gina Quan
Ford (2015) argues for viewing "scientific practice" not as a list of particular skills, but rather, as "sets of regularities of behaviors and social interactions" among scientists. This conceptualization of scientific practices foregrounds how they 1) meaningfully connect to one another, 2) are purposefully employed in their ability to explain nature and 3) prospectively adapt based on critique. While Ford focused on practices in K-12 classrooms, we apply this framework to understand how undergraduate physics majors do or do not make progress toward more central participation in physics research experiences. Using video from interviews with students and research mentors, and classroom and …
Attending To Scientific#12; Practices Within Undergraduate Research Experiences, Gina M. Quan, Chandra Anne Turpen, Andrew R. Elby
Jun 2016
Attending To Scientific#12; Practices Within Undergraduate Research Experiences, Gina M. Quan, Chandra Anne Turpen, Andrew R. Elby
Gina Quan
Ford (2015) argues for viewing “scientific practice” not as a list of particular skills, but rather, more
holistically as “sets of regularities of behaviors and social interactions” among scientists. This
conceptualization of scientific practices foregrounds how they meaningfully connect to one another and are
purposefully employed in order to explain nature. We apply this framework in the context of undergraduate
research experiences (UREs) to understand the early forms of student engagement in scientific practices,
and how these specific forms of engagement may be consequential for students’ future participation. Using
video from interviews with students and research mentors, we argue that …
Connecting Self-Efficacy And Nature Of Science Shifts In Undergraduate Research Experiences, Gina M. Quan
Jun 2015
Connecting Self-Efficacy And Nature Of Science Shifts In Undergraduate Research Experiences, Gina M. Quan
Gina Quan
Undergraduate research can support students’ more central participation in physics. We present analysis of one way this participation may shift: changes in their beliefs about the Nature of Science coupled to changes in a sense of ability to contribute to authentic research. Students in the study worked with faculty and graduate student research mentors on research projects and also participated in a seminar where they learned about research and reflected on their experiences. In videotaped interviews, we asked students to describe their experiences in research. Students developed nuanced views about how the research process works coupled to shifts in their …
