This project is coordinated with and strengthens and accelerates progress in a complementary project that is happening in the same timeframe. Project goals are to give greater weight to designing and especially implementing undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses in higher education that incorporate evidence-based practices, and to equip citizens to address global challenges involving STEM (in areas such as energy, environment, health, and food). Research indicates that both problems can often be successfully addressed by connecting STEM courses to the STEM components of real-world problems. The design of this project is to positively influence institutions of higher education to give more weight to these goals by making them more aware of and connected to the needs of state-level policy-making bodies. State-level policymakers are taking on growing importance in setting the direction of STEM education and are exploring how policy levers can be used to effect meaningful, lasting improvement in the design and delivery of STEM undergraduate courses.
This WIDER project is coordinated with a "Venture Project" currently funded through the NSF/ BIO Directorate-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). Among its activities SESYNC is supporting a venture called "State Policies to Transform Undergraduate STEM Education." The PIs of this venture are coordinating and working with teams from five states: California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, and New Mexico. This project is identifying similarities and differences in their educational systems and is examining each state's policy issues with STEM parameters to find ways to improve the content and pedagogy in undergraduate STEM courses and to align STEM education with state priorities for environmental and economic sustainability. These state teams include representatives from higher education, state government, and business & industry. Jointly they represent a spectrum of different sizes and complexities, presenting distinctive economic and social structures and educational systems. Through this project these states are learning jointly to strategically utilize existing networks at the state level to promote evidence-based approaches to the curriculum that draw from the research-based literature on effective approaches to the application of ideas and forms of inquiry derived from the study of STEM to real-world problems. It is this knowledge that both practicing scientists and engaged citizens must address for a sustainable future. The use of real-world problems is an especially effective high impact practice for deepening knowledge and understanding of complex concepts and principles.
