Making Changes in STEM Education: The Change Maker's Toolkit

Many science, engineering, technology, and math (STEM) faculty wish to make an academic change at the course, department, college, or university level, but they lack the specific tools and training that can help them achieve the changes they desire.

Making Changes in STEM Education: The Change Maker’s Toolkit is a practical guide based on academic change research and designed to equip STEM faculty and administrators with the skills necessary to accomplish their academic change goals. Each tool is categorized by a dominant theme in change work, such as opportunities for change, strategic vision, communication, teamwork, stakeholders, and partnerships, and is presented in context by the author, herself a change leader in STEM. In addition, the author provides interviews with STEM faculty and leaders who are engaged in their own change projects, offering additional insight into how the tools can be applied to a variety of educational contexts.

The book is ideal for STEM faculty who are working to change their courses, curricula, departments, and campuses and STEM administrators who lead such change work to support their faculties, as well as graduate students in STEM who plan to enter an academic position upon graduation and expect to work on academic change projects.

Download - Episode 149: Julia Williams, on how to be a changemaker in academia | Podbean

Julia M. Williams joined the faculty of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in 1992, then assumed duties as Executive Director of the Office of Institutional Research, Planning, and Assessment in 2005. From 2016 to 2019, she served as Interim Dean of Cross-Cutting Programs and Emerging Opportunities. Williams’ publications on assessment, engineering, professional communication, and tablet PCs have appeared in the Journal of Engineering Education and IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, among others. She has been awarded grants from Microsoft, HP, and the National Science Foundation. Currently, she supports the work of the Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (NSF RED) grant recipients.