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Innovations and Strategies for Moving Forward

Strategies for pursuing the goals of STEM education were the focus of several discussions throughout the symposium. Anchored by Aikaterini Bagiati’s presentation of a commissioned paper she wrote with Sanjay Sarma on Current Innovations in STEM Education and Equity Needs for the Future,¹ other presenters and participants considered new ways of thinking about curricula, approaches, and learning environments.

CURRENT INNOVATIONS IN STEM EDUCATION

Recent efforts to improve undergraduate STEM education and address inequities in the STEM environment were the focus of a paper prepared for the workshop by Sanjay Sarma and Aikaterini Bagiati and presented by Bagiati. The paper explored approaches to STEM education that the authors identified as innovative, transformative, and sustainable, and it examined ways in which these innovations supported institutional and societal goals for STEM education, including goals related to equity. The world now realizes that people need STEM education as much as STEM needs more people, said Bagiati. “We know that a quality STEM education can create better-informed citizens, people that are better able to navigate through the new digital and technology-oriented world and can create more opportunities for personal and professional development,” said Bagiati, who noted that aside from needing more STEM professions to tackle

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¹ A PDF of the paper can be found at https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/10-21-2020/imagining-the-future-of-undergraduate-stem-education-symposium.

many of society’s challenges, STEM needs more professionals from diverse populations.

Bagiati explained that they grounded their analysis in common principles regarding equity in STEM education, including concepts of access, fairness, inclusion, and provision of opportunities for personalized learning and personal and social development. She noted that scholars and institutions who have focused on the pursuit of equity in STEM education have all moved beyond the goal of making STEM education more inclusive to considering ways to make it both structurally and culturally responsive, that is, to considering sources of bias and alienation that can repel students, as well as ensuring that language and interactions are relatable to students of diverse cultural backgrounds.

Bagiati described how the paper describes 10 pathways to innovation in STEM education (Table 7-1). She spoke at length on two of these pathways: applying active learning pedagogies and adopting a multidisciplinary/integrative approach to STEM education. Active learning pedagogies such as problem-based learning, task-based learning, and project-based learning have been discussed for decades. Over this period, active learning techniques have evolved from small-scale, hands-on activities to semester-long projects or even entire academic programs that place project-based learning techniques at the center of the academic experience. She argued that project-based and active learning could be used to advance an equity agenda by continuing to revise these techniques so that they increasingly reflect an approach that “calls for active student engagement with authentic, real-life problems and for projects deeply connected to student culture and identity.” These approaches are designed to connect current learning experiences with

TABLE 7-1 Innovations in STEM Education

SOURCE: Bagiati and Sarma commissioned paper, p. 5. https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/10-21-2020/imagining-the-future-of-undergraduate-stem-education-symposium.

the student’s preexisting knowledge, allow for opportunities to engage in collaborative learning, allow for providing timely feedback, and foster growth at each student’s own pace. The Community College Undergraduate Research Initiative (CCURI), Open Schools for Open Society (OSOS), and the Aalborg Center for Project Based Learning (PBL) were cited as projects and initiatives that incorporate best practices in active and project-based learning pedagogies.

It is clear, said Bagiati, that there are challenges to using active learning and inquiry-based approaches. Challenges arise particularly when the problem or project is poorly defined or adapted for instructional use, when there is insufficient guidance during the activity, or when the classroom scaffolding is inadequately designed. Additional effort might also be needed when learners are novices or when they are completely unfamiliar with the content of the method. “We need to reorient this approach and understand proper adaption and implementation,” she said.

Regarding the move to multidisciplinary STEM education, she noted that there are now multidisciplinary programs at some institutions and even entire schools based on this idea. One trend that is encouraging to her is the incorporation of the humanities, arts, and social sciences into a multidisciplinary STEM curriculum. “We believe that a more human and equitable solution cannot arise unless citizens and professionals are also introduced to fundamental concepts and skills, deeply rooted to the fields of humanities, social sciences, and the liberal arts,” Bagiati explained. As more schools adopt this approach, research will identify its strengths and weaknesses. So far, she noted, the full integration of humanities, arts, and social sciences into STEM curricula is challenging and overwhelming to faculty that do not have formal training in humanities, arts, and social science content. The Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program and the undergraduate curriculum of the (SUTD) are two organizations doing promising work in this realm.²

Bagiati said there are also other promising innovations for educational improvement:

• Implementing competency-based education (CBE). CBE approaches enable students to choose “from a wide range of learning experiences at school, online, and beyond and work with educators to build their own learning pathways.” Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governors University were cited as pioneers working in CBE.³

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² More information about VIP is available at https://www.vip.gatech.edu/vip-vertically-integrated-projects-program. More information about SUTD is available at https://www.sutd.edu.sg/Admissions/Undergraduate.

³ More information about CBE is available at https://www.ed.gov/oii-news/competency-based-learning-or-personalized-learning.

• Supporting learning experiences beyond the classroom. Cocurricular experiences have benefits for student learning and development; however access to cocurricular involvement can raise issues of equity, as not all students have equal access to cocurricular opportunities due to financial constraints or other limitations to access.
• Providing flexible, cost-efficient educational paths to continuous learning. Changing student demographics and the growth of existing groups such as refugee students have led to the emergence of new credentials and other novel postsecondary educational opportunities. While platforms such as Coursera and edX have enabled much innovation in this area, equity concerns persist due to access limitations stemming from “the digital divide,” as well as language and cultural barriers.

Bagiati said that the paper also presents a framework of strategies to build upon existing innovations as the field moves toward a more equitable vision of higher education in the STEM field. Suggested strategies were as follows:

• Careful design of content, assessment, and pedagogy (CAP) in STEM higher education
• Development of technology and infrastructure grounded in the science of learning
• Enhancement of teacher education and faculty development
• Implementation of new educational policies and strategies to support innovation
• Development of new national and global STEM credentials

To conclude her remarks, Bagiati said that progress has been made in terms of incorporating innovations into STEM education, but much opportunity remains, especially as the needs of the economy, insights into pedagogy, and emerging venues for education continue to evolve. “As we look toward the future, it is important to reflect on what has worked and what has not to ensure that this opportunity to reimagine STEM higher education yields ideas that encourage bold, sustainable solutions, not jury-rigged solutions based on convenience,” said Bagiati. Moreover, she added, given that each innovation for the sake of improving education can either reduce various inequalities or exacerbate them if care is not taken with respect to design and implementation, it is important to ensure that the tide of innovation lifts all boats by way of equity-focused policies and practices at the institutional and state levels.

ALIGNING GOALS, STRUCTURES, AND STRATEGIES

Panelists were asked to reflect on how structures that currently shape undergraduate STEM education align with aspirations for the future and what strategies could help higher education achieve its goals in educating undergraduate STEM students (see Box 7-1). Panelists provided perspectives from a research university, a technical institute, a Community College, and those of a recent undergraduate.

In opening the panel, Mitra noted that the goals for undergraduate STEM education in 2040 are not materially different from the goals already being pursued: preparing students to tackle the complex societal problems of the twenty-first century. “I think it is for them to envision what has never been done and then do whatever it takes to make it happen,” said Mitra. He also believes that postsecondary education should help students change who they are, expand their view of the world and their goals, and explore new ideas. One change he does want to see by 2040 is for there to be proper representation of all demographics in STEM, and the one thing he would expect undergraduates STEM students to learn in 2040 is to think more effectively. “Creative thinking, critical thinking, systems thinking, ethical thinking are tools that we will always find useful,” said Mitra. He added that the pandemic has accelerated the need to adapt, be flexible,

and prepare for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. It is no coincidence that all of these skills, he said, are those needed to work in a startup.

Today, said Mitra, education is more focused on content and skills and not so much on helping students learn how to learn and think more effectively. He commented that when students are motivated, they can do anything, which implies that teaching should be more relevant to students (understanding air quality versus learning quantum mechanics, for example).

Acknowledging that teaching engineering without quantum mechanics is sacrilegious with respect to standard engineering education, Mitra pointed out that today’s technologies enable a student to enter the specifications for a car suspension part, for example, and have it produced in a matter of minutes. “You do not need any physical principles to do that,” he said, “and given artificial intelligence and machine learning, we do not have to be engineers to design bolts and fasteners or a variety of other things.”

In his opinion, it will be more useful for postsecondary education to produce generalists whose fundamentals are strong and who can use general-purpose tools such as calculus, artificial intelligence, computational tools, machine learning tools, and physical simulation and then apply those tools to solve important questions. “That is what I would like us to shoot for in 2040,” said Mitra.

For Weekes, the most important goal of undergraduate STEM education should be to increase the understanding and awareness of what is going on in the world so that students will be better global citizens who can make ethical, sound decisions, and build healthier, safer, and more just societies. By 2040, she would like to see data incorporated naturally into education as a means of creating data-competent graduates and data-critical citizens. Along the same lines, she would like to see STEM education incorporate the social sciences, humanities, and arts to produce better-informed and critically thinking graduates who can communicate with the general public about what STEM means to society. What she would like to never hear again is a student ask, “When will I ever use this?” Finally, she would like to see STEM education produce STEM-competent people who will be at the table making policy decisions that affect everyone.

At her institution, Worchester Polytechnic Institute, every student has the opportunity to work on significant, open-ended problems as a requirement for graduation. That type of work, she said, helps students retain concepts and provides graduates with the satisfaction of already having worked on a real problem. She also noted that her school has built structures to welcome students who are from groups underrepresented in STEM and make them feel comfortable and appreciated in the STEM community. One of her passions, she said, has been connecting academia to industry to

identify the problems industry is having and that students might attempt to solve.

Sorensen-Unruh said she believes in centering the humanity of students in any goal regarding STEM education, which to her is an issue of social justice. Doing so requires two actions: eliminating racism, misogyny, colonization and colonialism, homophobia and transphobia, and ableism among all STEM students, faculty, and administrators and treating all students with respect and compassion in a way that honors their lived experience. Creating a more equitable, diverse, inclusive, and socially just STEM education by 2040 should start with eliminating the “banking model” in content delivery and education. The banking model assumes that coursework deposits knowledge into students as if they were bank accounts. “As learning and cognitive scientists, we know knowledge is actively created and recreated by each student within their own learning process,” she explained. To go along with that, there is a need to radically change class assessment and evaluation and incorporate strategies such as open-project or problem-based assessment. “Allowing our students to have an active role in their course evaluation, at least through a conversation with the instructor, is absolutely critical,” said Sorensen-Unruh. “We must employ innovative solutions such as ungrading to enable students to recognize their own agency and power within their learning development in STEM, and until we change the conversation on how we assign grades, treating our students as humans will always be an afterthought.” Sorensen-Unruh carries out her work with these goals at Central New Mexico Community College.

She also commented on the need to challenge all blind and unthoughtful use of educational technology, including what she called the predatory use of antiplagiarism software and artificial intelligence–powered exam proctoring software. A third step, she said, is to integrate digital and information literacy into course curricula and promote open access and open science so that all students can resource themselves appropriately today and in the future. The final step to creating a more equitable, diverse, inclusive, and socially just STEM education is to require STEM faculty to take classes in pedagogy; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and instructional design so that they can successfully implement innovative and socially just STEM education techniques in their own classrooms.

Recent graduate and current Ph.D. student Carter said she would like to see undergraduate STEM education in 2040 allow students to work on topics that resonate with their values, and see education shift from a treatment-focused paradigm to one focused on prevention, which would lead to a solution-focused scientific process. As an example, she asked the symposium participants to imagine working in an environmental justice community in which residents expressed concerns about living close to a Superfund site. Instead of treating every individual that develops cancer

from exposure to carcinogens at the site, she proposed cleaning the source of the contamination and getting to the root of the problem.

Another characteristic Carter would like undergraduate STEM education to have by 2040 is for it to be highly interdisciplinary with different tracks, which in her field would include a molecular biology track, an environmental microbiology track, and an environmental policy track. Students could take electives such as scientific journalism, critical race theory, and cultural competency courses, and they would be required to participate in a research project that focuses on a community-specific societal issue. This structure would enable students to learn how to work in a highly collaborative environment, learn critical thinking skills, and learn the value of community expertise, all skills that prospective employers would find valuable.

EXPECTATIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT WHO IS INVOLVED IN STEM

After their brief presentations, planning committee member Monique Umphrey of Houston Community College, Northeast led the group in further discussion, beginning by asking Sorensen-Unruh to comment on the assumptions faculty members sometimes bring with them that make it difficult for them to adopt a vision that places students at the center of their educational experiences. Sorensen-Unruh said that a friend of hers talks about how faculty often think of students as cells on a spreadsheet because they are so used to looking at grading sheets that they forget their students are three-dimensional human beings. The challenge, she said, is to look at a student as a complete human being. She has some great Indigenous students at her school, for example, who cannot get a national internship because they have a criminal record, and sponsors of internship programs do not look past that to see someone who has served their time and is very much engaged in their STEM learning process.

Umphrey then asked Weekes to talk about how to expand who is included as a STEM student and STEM professional. The first step, said Weekes, is realizing that not everyone is at the table; she called for everyone to question the current price of admission to the STEM community. As an example, she cited her own experience of having to master either French or German to get her Ph.D. in mathematics. A few universities still have that as a price of admission, even though almost all of the mathematics literature is now in English. Another step is to think seriously about whether all students feel comfortable and welcome in the STEM community.

Responding to a question about how to better engage students today who might not be considering STEM careers, Carter said that the most important thing to do is to make STEM courses relevant to the personal lives of students. For example, she might tell a Black student who comes from

a low-wealth community that Black people breathe in 66 percent more air pollution from vehicles than White people (De Moura et al., 2019). She noted that she was able to stay engaged in STEM because she was able to merge her passion for social justice with science, which turned out to be a therapeutic process for her in that it allowed her scientific persona to coexist with her social justice persona. She also pointed to the importance of engaging students in STEM when they are still in elementary school and making internships available for high school students interested in STEM regardless of whether they come from a privileged community or a less well-off one.

When asked to share some of the techniques that her institution, New Mexico Community College, has used to widen the pathway into STEM, Sorensen-Unruh said that digital literacy is an important aspect of building the population of students who enter STEM education. She uses online learning journals as blogs that students can write in regularly to talk about their learning journey or an article that was particularly important or interesting to them that can then start a conversation. She uses ungrading practices (Blum and Kohn, 2020; Schinske and Tanner, 2014) and has students self-evaluate themselves and talk about their growth and the grade they thought they should get based on their effort and time spent on a project or exam. “I try to build metacognition and self-assessment into the classroom so that when students depart from my classroom, they can have not only some knowledge about organic chemistry, but they can also have knowledge about what kind of techniques will be helpful to them in the future,” she explained.

Weekes added that she is a proponent of summer research programs such as NSF’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program⁴ or the program run by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute⁵ for students who are not highly represented in their disciplines or even their departments. She noted that she has witnessed the students participating in these programs experience surprise and delight at seeing other students that look like them. What is important, though, is to encourage these students to form their own networks and communities so that when they go back to their home institutions, they can continue getting support from their peers.

Planning committee member and Olin College faculty member Stein reflected on the panel discussion and noted that each of the panelists had painted a picture of a future world that is inclusive, meaningful, and connected to one’s own experiences. She noted however, that what she sees in

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⁴ Additional information is available at https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5517.

⁵ Additional information is available at https://www.msri.org/web/msri/education/for-undergraduates/msri-up.

the real world today does not quite look like that. “You may be teaching this way, you may be having these experiences, but that is not ubiquitous across higher education now,” said Stein. She asked the panelists to discuss the structures that act as obstacles to making these experiences the rule rather than the exception. Mitra flipped the question around and listed five actions that could make such experiences possible: have a bold vision; create the right team; engage stakeholders across the board, including students, faculty, and representatives from industry; launch programs that aim to change institutional culture; and think and act like a startup. “It is important to recognize that we are talking about culture change and a change of attitude,” said Mitra. “We are not talking about changing content and curriculum.”

Sorensen-Unruh gave a different answer from her vantage point in the Community College environment: working to get 4-year institutions on board with what she and her colleagues are doing. When she first implemented ungrading, for example, she had to go to the local medical school to get its okay given that most of her students taking organic chemistry were doing so as a prerequisite for applying to medical school. “Until the 4-year community, the graduate school community, and professional school community all buy into some of these techniques that we are talking about, our hands are going to be tied,” she explained. She along with Umphrey also noted that many students no longer go to Community College and then a 4-year institution, but rather go back and forth between the two along their educational journey.

Responding to a question about providing support for students in STEM learning pathways, Carter called for an increase in the resources devoted to Minority-Serving Institutions, and to environmental justice work at all types of institutions. She also said that institutions need to increase the number of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color who get tenure. Weekes noted the importance of getting diverse voices at the table to advocate for change and for the adoption of these types of activities. Sorensen-Unruh added that institutions of higher education need to let their faculty be innovative in the ways they instruct their students and stop discouraging experimentation. She also said that educational innovators need to share their ideas and their implementation plans online.

CREATING THE FUTURE

A group of thought leaders and educators was asked to draw on what they had heard during the symposium to imagine a system of undergraduate STEM education as it might look in 2040, a system in which students are well served and well prepared to join the STEM workforce and to navigate the world (see Box 7-2). Panelists were chosen to provide perspectives from

academic institutions large and small, as well as nonprofits working to improve education and workforce preparation.

Singer began the session by asking the symposium participants to imagine it was August 2040 and the new academic year was about to launch. Institutions of higher education are still deeply committed to a relevant STEM education that is consciously inclusive, accessible, holistic, flexible, mentored, community-centered, research-centered, filled with rich intellectual experiences, focused on competencies and transferable adaptable skills, supportive of lifelong learning, and filled with curated happenstances that always place the student at the center, but the STEM landscape has changed dramatically in the post-COVID-19 world. In 2040, STEM students enter a higher education system where traditional semesters no longer exist on campuses that no longer have defined borders, information about disciplinary departments can be found in archives, and faculty move in and out of convergent teams focused on grand challenges. Perhaps most importantly, the STEM population in 2040 mirrors the diversity of the nation as a whole.

Continuing to set the scene, Singer said that face-to-face learning is reserved for those situations where person-to-person and person-to-physical environment interactions are absolutely essential and textbook publishers no longer exist. Neuromorphic artificial intelligence has produced efficient digital approaches to analyze cognitive tests, and STEM cognitive tutors abound and are shared widely across the nation. Different cognitive tutors scaffold student learning, measure competencies,

and allow aligned progression through collaborative in-person learning opportunities. “That is really the most important and exciting part of the 2040 STEM education,” said Singer. With more scaffolded and connected learning, students complete their baccalaureate degree in the equivalent of 3 years, and students move in and out of the educational system through modular approaches that can result in certificates and associate’s degrees along the way. In fact, said Singer, the degree itself is on its way to irrelevancy, with digital portfolios serving to demonstrate qualifications and experience.

In this imagined 2040 world, all students—STEM and non-STEM—start their education with a community project that has a STEM dimension such as assessing air quality and the incidence of asthma in mobile homes in which recent immigrants live or working on supply chain management for a local food bank to reduce food spoilage. “Scientists, social scientists, humanists, and artists come together to set the stage for learning in the world of convergence,” said Singer. “We have moved past general education to integrated, purposeful learning.”

Research projects in 2040, she noted, can be regional and pull multiple institutions together to maximize the use of research instrumentation. Global projects will build on cognitive, tutored language learning and partnerships with global universities abroad or global firms. Partnerships will enhance career opportunities and new financial models, making college accessible financially for everyone.

In response to Singer’s presentation about 2040, Eroy-Reveles thanked her for the visionary scenario, and noted that it is flexible, personally relevant, team-based, and engaged with the community. However, Eroy-Reveles noted that the scenario actually presented a deep paradox for her, in that she wants to work on community-engaged projects with a team of faculty, community members, and students, but her reality is teaching 800 general chemistry students for 10 weeks at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “I want to get there,” she said, “but there is a deep cultural change that must take place first.”

To illustrate that problem, Eroy-Reveles recalled how when she attended her first conference of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS); the organization was celebrating its 30th anniversary. A topic of discussion at that meeting was that since its founding 30 years earlier, the number of Ph.D.s awarded to Hispanics and Native Americans in STEM had only increased from 1 percent to 3 percent. Today, SACNAS is approaching its 50th anniversary, and Eroy-Reveles’ guess was that there would only be another small percentage change.

Eroy-Reveles noted that the vision Singer presented challenges colleges and universities to completely reorganize themselves in a way that puts

students, their intricacies, and their interconnectedness at the center of the undergraduate experience. Instead of every member being an island unto themselves, this vision will require faculty to move away from individualistic thinking to emphasize collaboration and interdependence. She then wondered which institutions will respond to this challenge and said that it was likely to be those colleges that are already student-centered. “I see the Community Colleges and primarily undergraduate institutions continually asking how can we do better and how can we help our students,” said Eloy-Reveles. “They are going to be the ones that drive this change.”

One key to achieving equity-focused transformation, she added, will be for STEM education to adopt equity as a primary measure of success, which requires knowing more about who the students are so as to make their education more relevant. She noted that the hiring practices at many institutions, including here, require a diversity statement in employment applications. “This brings in faculty who are very student-centered and who are thinking about our whole population of students,” said Eroy-Reveles. Concluding her remarks, she said, “If by 2040, undergraduate institutions, departments, faculty, and granting agencies can adopt equity as our primary measure of success, we will then see our students, and we will serve them with kindness and personally relevant education.”

Over the past 3 years in his role with the League for Innovation in the Community College, Glasper said he has been working with the Higher Learning Commission accreditors to create a report that also shared a vision for the future of higher education (Betz et al., 2019). This report concentrated on student-focused engagement and ways in which governance and accreditation can play a role in system transformation. In his view, the most critical goal of undergraduate STEM education is a transition to defining program success by using key performance indicators that measure the cultivation of students who add value to the STEM workforce and their ability to earn a livable wage for a family of four and be successful in their chosen career. He added that by 2040, he would like to see a higher proportion of workers aged 55 and older getting STEM undergraduate degrees, which will place Community Colleges in a lead role in undergraduate STEM education.

Soo, of Jobs for the Future, remarked that one of the things he liked about Singer’s vision for 2040 was the idea of cognitive tutors who can take advantage of the many active learning tools that are coming online. In fact, he believes that online education combined with artificial intelligence will make the next generation of learning tools better and more targeted than those available today. He also appreciated the modular approach to STEM education that Singer proposed. His one question was whether a student’s learning journey can be done at multiple institutions and venues, including online learning, boot camps and other intensive courses, and apprenticeships and corporate training programs. His general point was that there

are so many different types of organizations that will be in the learning business. “I think that once we get better at assessing the quality of learning, I can imagine a more porous learning journey that goes through many different institutions,” said Soo. He did note his concern that a radical reimagining of undergraduate STEM education could exacerbate inequities without a laser focus on ensuring better outcomes for underrepresented populations of students.

Planning committee member and Morehouse College faculty member Gosha opened the discussion by asking the panelists to comment on how the STEM learning experience of 2040 could be designed from the start to be more equitable. Soo replied that pathways to a degree need to be more equitable, starting with the search for ways to make sure everyone is prepared to enter those pathways. “As we are developing these alternative pathways and new ways of recognizing learning and going in and out of things, we need to make sure that those are recognized and seen as legitimate,” said Soo, “because if they are not seen as legitimate or just as good as, then we are going to be shifting a whole group of people—and we can all guess which people might be shifted into them—into something that is substandard.”

Glasper said he would like to see the notion of STEM education expanded to include construction, advanced manufacturing, welding, transportation, and energy, for example. This would give an electrical line worker—the person who climbs poles for the electric company—the opportunity to take classes at a Community College and 4-year institution and get a degree in electrical engineering. Singer noted that NSF’s Advance Technology Education program has been trying to do just that for nearly 30 years. What excites her about this avenue into STEM is that it creates the opportunity for industry to share in the expense of a student’s education.

Gosha then asked the panelists whether they believe that inequities among student populations will remain in 2040. Glasper said he thinks they will remain at a certain level and that he is not optimistic, seeing how little progress has occurred since he graduated 45 years ago. He sees the lack of what he referred to as a pluralistic system of delivery models as a chief impediment. “We are still looking at delivery models as being the same for every community and the same for every person,” said Glasper. “We need to try to look at who the student is and where they come from before focusing the student into the model.”

Responding to a question about how the materials that students learn from will change by 2040, Eroy-Reveles suggested that the curriculum will be more integrated and group-based, which she believes will help close equity gaps. Singer said she is hopeful that the uptake of research-based practices will continue, and that today’s graduate students will become faculty who use these practices to improve student learning experiences.

Commenting on the connections between academia and industry, Glasper said that he sees this relationship changing and getting stronger with an emphasis on responding to challenges more quickly.

Gosha then asked the panelists whether they thought lifelong learning would be a reality by 2040, and Soo said he could not imagine that it would not be. “If we are going to have a 60-year work life, there are going to be so many things that come out over that time that people will have to learn new skills,” said Soo. “The question is whether that education beyond degrees happens at the university or colleges or happens at companies.” He said it would behoove colleges and universities to embrace that post-degree market. Doing so, however, will require 4-year institutions to become nimbler and faster at responding to changes in workforce demands. Singer added that she is seeing hints that this is happening already. She noted a nonprofit organization called Credential Engine as a place for those in the workforce to go to get information about lifelong learning opportunities and the value of credentials.⁶ She noted that the demographic for those seeking higher education is no longer exclusively those 18 to 22 years old but now includes older working adults.

Posing a question from the symposium participants, Gosha asked the panelists how they would create pathways for humanizing education for faculty today, who the questioner said are ready and willing to move in this direction. Eroy-Reveles replied that creating a community of practice where faculty come together, reflect on what a humanizing education is, and support each other is an important step. Glasper added that breaking education into smaller pieces that allow students to alternate between learning, working to make a living, returning to school for another chunk of education, and so on will help humanize education. He noted that he is working on a project called the Community College Growth Engine Fund⁷ that is bringing together six Community Colleges from across the nation to lead a demonstration of how Community Colleges can leverage innovation capacity, regional partnerships, and dynamic labor market data to identify and build subdegree “micropathways” with designated credentials that employers validate. These micropathways will enable learners to earn wages or salaries at or above the median level and stackable credit for degree attainment.

The next question from a symposium participant asked why the decades-old models of interdisciplinary, project-based education developed at Evergreen and Northland have not been adopted elsewhere. This program, explained Singer, uses team-taught courses with faculty from different disciplines and resembles the scenario she painted at the start of the session.

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⁶ Additional information is available at https://credentialengine.org/about/.

⁷ Additional information is available at https://eddesignlab.org/project/growthenginefund/.

Barriers to scaling this type of program include financial barriers. Receiving a Pell grant, for example, is conditional on being enrolled in 12 credit hours of courses in a degree program. In addition to state policies that constrain options, she pointed out that it is important that industry recognizes the type of credentials students would get from this type of program.

Soo agreed that there are policy and financial aid issues that need to be resolved because they are not up to the task of supporting innovative approaches to education. He did predict that there would be new financing mechanisms to support nonaccredited programs such as boot camps and credentialing programs. He noted that companies spend many billions of dollars annually on training, and he wondered whether there was a better way of aligning and incentivizing companies to allocate some of those funds to training opportunities in higher education. Singer added that there are isolated examples of institutions developing short-term programs that are funded by mechanisms other than Pell grants and MBA programs funded by businesses rather than by individuals. She also mentioned the need for more public-private partnerships between higher education and industry, and Glasper added that Community Colleges could work with businesses to reach an agreement about credit and noncredit educational opportunities.

Gosha pointed out as a final comment that his institution is the first Historically Black College and University to offer a coding boot camp for its students. His division at Moorhouse College works with industry partners to codevelop courses in computer science.

REDESIGNING THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

Panelists discussed ways to redesign campuses, classrooms, and learning experiences to align with ambitious goals for the future of STEM education (see Box 7-3). Educators from a variety of institutions including a specialized training school were joined by an architect who works on campus design to share their diverse perspectives on possibilities for future learning.

Gonzaga University dean Annemarie Caño began the panel session by saying that project-based and problem-based learning and crafting experiences designed to solve problems that are meaningful to students bring the interdisciplinary piece into undergraduate STEM education and offer students an opportunity to integrate learning from various disciplines and be more creative. At the same time, she added, it becomes a challenge to prepare students and faculty to engage in a different kind of learning experience. Caño noted that some faculty at her institutions are providing these types of experiences for their students and that NSF is supporting them. Other faculty, however, are happy to be in their disciplinary silos, so it

behooves undergraduate institutions to figure out how to respect that desire and still develop lifelong learning experiences for faculty and students and create faculty reward structures that recognize the importance of integrative learning experiences.

Luther, an architect and experienced designer, explained in her remarks that she is one of the leaders of the Campus 2050 Consortium.⁸ In her view, the barrier to inclusive, open-source, real-time delivery of education is the current structure of higher education, which she said has not changed much for the past 900 to 1,000 years. What she would like to see is a new structure that marries workforce development with people and institutions of higher education so that artificial intelligence, technology, and individual relationships help shape a student wanting to go to university for something specific, employers wanting to target a specific talent, and universities that provide the right outcomes and opportunities for the students. This approach would make partnerships more holistic, help curate student learning over their lifetime, and help students stay engaged in lifetime learning as their careers evolve.

From his perspective as founder of San Diego Code School, Roberts said that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the process of reimagining what undergraduate STEM education will look like in the future. In his opinion, undergraduate institutions need to figure out each student’s “superpower” that can help them make a big impact in the workforce and

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⁸ Additional information is available at https://populous.com/making-case-innovation-districts.

also reimagine how they can create environments that are more supportive of and centered around students. This, he said, comes down to identifying the types of wraparound services each individual needs to be successful. It also requires higher education to pivot and constantly recalibrate what students need to get a good job that adds meaning to their lives. He then questioned why institutions of higher education do not cooperate more with STEM employers to determine the skills that students need to master.

Eddinger noted that Community Colleges, such as Bunker Hill Community College where she is the president, are educating close to half of all U.S. undergraduates, and these students will constitute the foundation of the 2040 workforce. Some 65 to 70 percent of the students at these institutions are from underrepresented groups and are primarily first-generation students from low-income populations. The changing makeup of this population, she said, will affect Community Colleges in 2040 in that more adult students will attend community colleges and the majority of these “nontraditional” Community College students will be working as they go to school.

She explained that students in 2040 will be going in and out of the workforce, and what will not change is the attractiveness of STEM for these students. “My students know that STEM is going to be providing their new jobs,” said Eddinger, and yet people of color, women, and adults are not seen as prime candidates for the jobs of the future. She then described a program organized by the New England Venture Capital Association called Hack Diversity, which takes cohorts of Community College students of color and women and matches them with employers in the computer science and information technology fields. At first, she said, employers were reluctant to take on students who did not already know what they were doing, but after three or four cohorts went through the programs, it was clear that companies were hiring these students after they completed this internship program. The important point, she said in her concluding comments, is to understand where students are coming from and what their goals in life are.

BUILDING TOWARD THE VISION

Planning committee member and Amherst College faculty member Horton opened the discussion by asking the panelists how they would introduce the many necessary, people-intensive changes that have been discussed in a sustainable manner given the financial constraints facing institutions of higher education at all levels. Eddinger said the easy answer is to get foundation funding, ask industry for money, and in short, be innovative in how education is funded. Ultimately, though, if undergraduate STEM education is ever to be foundational for a vibrant U.S. economy,

federal and state governments will have to stop disinvesting in public higher education. One key to making that happen, she said, is to drive home the message that public higher education is a public good, an idea with which Luther agreed.

For Roberts, the solution to having undergraduate STEM education serve the public good is to not only to support all of the suggested changes the discussions have highlighted but also to pay students, particularly those that wanting retraining or upskilling, and those students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The source of those funds could be industry if companies can be persuaded to reinvest some of the money they spend now on recruiting and in-house retraining into cooperative education models.

Caño pointed to the importance of supporting faculty through all of the changes that the future of STEM education will require to create a more inclusive, diverse, and meaningful educational system. “If we want them to transform the way they are teaching, we need to make sure they have the time and energy to do so,” she said. She also noted that interdisciplinary teaching and team teaching are important ways to support faculty and that they want to engage each other in this way. Caño urged an allotment of time and space to give faculty the latitude to test approaches to this type of teaching, which can also serve as a means of breaking down silos and sharing knowledge across disciplines. She suggested incorporating STEM-based, service-learning experiences into the undergraduate experience.

Horton agreed that team teaching should be an important part of the undergraduate STEM educational system. He added that the pathways into and out of Community Colleges, 4-year institutions, and the workplace need to be smoother and become a standard part of the educational system. Luther said she believes universities, where the free flow of information and collaboration should be happening, should be places where interdisciplinary teaching and team teaching should occur naturally. The challenge will be breaking down the silos that exist between the university ecosystem and the workplace ecosystem.

Roberts sees the changing of the guard between now and 2040 as being an incredibly important prerequisite for future change. He noted that the current generation of students is serious about social change, and he predicted that these younger faculty and administrators will drive change from the bottom up and support the innovation needed to create the educational ecosystem that students and the U.S. economy need.

Eddinger said that she hopes that the next 20 years will involve the best dismantling of higher education ever, particularly the dismantling of privilege regarding both race and ethnicity and the privilege elite institutions take for granted. “I would like to see the dismantling of faculty space and administration space in such a way that we see the components that are

good and that the work that we do then is in the reassembling of it,” she said. She also called for creating more local hubs that can work together to serve their communities, work together to improve the educational system, and work together to scale programs that work locally.