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Preface This second volume shifts focus to professional development in the broadest sense. About half of these contributions examine various ways in which faculty can be supported at all stages of their careers. The latter chapters outline several interventions with high schools to promote STEM education and literacy in support of national workforce needs as well as a strong interest in fostering a scienceliterate public. Like the first volume, there are examples that are both large in scale as well as those that can be implemented immediately. Members of the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative have been leveraging their experiences to aid in new and maturing faculty members as they embark on various stages and aspects of their careers. The idea of undertaking a professional development project may seem out of reach for a pre-tenure faculty member, but the need of many faculty for peer mentorship demonstrates how a little help goes a long way. Thompson and Hardy outline the mutual mentoring program that they developed for female STEM faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, about eight years ago (Chapter 1). Much of their work follows from Ellen Daniell’s book Every Other Thursday: Stories and Strategies from Successful Women Scientists. The program that Thompson and Hardy developed, UMass Mutual Mentoring, leveraged these ideas in a simple, easy-to-implement, no cost program that benefits women across disciplines and academic rank. The chapter outlines their development process and the core features of their program. The chapter is rich in practical advice and strategies. For example, they built groups of 8–10 participants, but the meeting times varied to accommodate various personal and professional obligations. Similarly, participants were initially assigned a chapter from Daniell’s book as a prompt for discussion at early meetings, but once the groups were sufficiently comfortable to engage in impromptu discussion, that practice was discontinued. The value of the program is evident from the tremendous growth in female faculty at UMass Amherst as well as the inclusion of women from non-STEM disciplines in UMass Mutual Mentoring. Beuning and fellow Cottrell Scholars Besson and Snyder report on the process of developing their handbook for new faculty, Teach Better, Save Time, and Have More Fun: A Guide to Teaching and Mentoring in Science (Chapter 2). The volume, free to the public courtesy of Research Corporation for Science Advancement, has been tremendously successful in providing help, guidance, and wisdom with some 500 print copies distributed already and countless views and downloads digitally. The book’s authors recognized that the excellent and copious literature on the practice of science teaching is a rich, though intimidating, resource for many new faculty with little to no formal training in pedagogy. ix Waterman and Feig; Educational and Outreach Projects from the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative Professional Development ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.
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Their method was to provide a bridge to that information through the anecdotal experiences of current faculty. They tapped into the expertise of a wide group of faculty, relying heavily on interviews with Cottrell Scholars and their expertise in the execution of high quality teaching. Beside the view from the trenches of what works and what doesn’t, the book also features a trove of resources in a deep, well-annotated bibliography. Part of the success of the book has been its successful integration into workshops and trainings at all levels. Feig and Waterman share lessons learned from the now five-year-old Cottrell Scholar Collaborative New Faculty Workshop in chemistry (Chapter 3). The workshop is a collaborative effort of the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative and the American Chemical Society that provides new hires and faculty with up to one year of experience information on instructional practices, mentoring, time management, cultural competency, and other topics that are frequently omitted from most faculty members’ training. The workshop has demonstrated success in helping participants gain familiarity with and execute vetted instructional practices (i.e., active learning) in their classrooms. The workshop facilitators have targeted broad change in the community, a process as difficult to measure as it is to realize. Some discussion of their anecdotal observations provide context for how departments and institutions may affect change among their faculty. Hernandez and coworkers, including a core team of Cottrell Scholars, developed and executed the Academic Leadership Training (ALT) Workshop in 2016 and report the details of that initial workshop and results (Chapter 4). The workshop was designed around five learning outcomes, enhanced preparation and motivation, provide tools and skills, improve leadership strengths, understand leadership roles and duties, and provide interview preparation, for participants. These outcomes were addressed in panels, mock interviews, 360-degree leadership feedback, and work products at ALT in a program that targets mid-career faculty for positions including center directors, department chairs, and deans among other administrative roles. Critical to the execution and success of ALT was partnerships with the American Chemical Society and the American Institute of Physics. Impact of the initial offering of the workshop, which was run for the second time in early 2017, was measured through pre-and post-survey of participants. A significant area that faculty consider for impact beyond research is outreach. While the classic notions of community outreach still have significant merit, many Cottrell Scholars have demonstrated that it is easy and appropriate to tie outreach efforts more directly to research activities and have yet greater impact on the target communities. Byers and coworkers report on their Paper to Plastics (P2P) Program at Boston College (Chapter 5). The program is a summer experience for high school students that emulates the discovery process associated with genuine research but is reliable, reproducible, and topical for participants. The team’s experiences and challenges with issues of topic selection, activities, timing, and evaluation are those faced in any outreach program. Thus, the experience with P2P and the spin-off program “You Evolve a Protein!” provide an excellent basis to describe the challenges and an example solution in designing a high-impact outreach program. Much of the chapter provides a roadmap (well-illustrated in Figure 3!) x
Waterman and Feig; Educational and Outreach Projects from the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative Professional Development ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.
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to execute any similar program. Byers and coworkers further provide data to illustrate some of the impacts of P2P, showing that these lessons derive from both their frustrations but also their successes. Clark and coworkers report on their efforts to develop a research-centered outreach program to local high schools that aims to promote student engagement in STEM in higher education and beyond (Chapter 6). The foundation of the program provides high school teachers with summer research experiences. They describe some of the well-documented benefits of providing research experiences to teachers. In this context, however, the teachers are well-grounded in the research associated with the university partners. Following that research experience, Clark and a team of undergraduates visit the high school classrooms and discuss chemistry, STEM careers, and the educational pathways to those careers with students. The students also tour academic and industrial laboratories to view the first-hand the career paths in chemistry. Finally, they provide self-reported data that indicate these interventions yield students with positive perceptions of STEM careers and their educational opportunities. Skrabalak and coworkers describe a simple, low cost strategy to engage high school students with research via the Science Ambassadors program (Chapter 7). Science Ambassadors are undergraduate students who, after at least an academic year of research, return to their high school alma mater to engage with current high school students about research opportunities. The visit includes a personal introduction with information about their interests in- and outside of science, an overview of the research project and its significance, a demonstration or hands-on activity with the class, and a short survey about interest in STEM fields, research, and higher education. The program is low cost because Science Ambassadors are going home and do their high school visits outside of the semester. The potential pool of Science Ambassadors is deep, but it is noted that outgoing students with enthusiasm for science and research are most successful. Data from more than 300 high school students shows that the Science Ambassadors have a positive impact on their perception and interest in science. It is clear that this program is easily exported to any institution and will likely have similarly high success. In closing, we would like to reiterate our thanks to Research Corporation for Science Advancement for its unwavering support of the integration of research and education. The symposium was supported by the Division of Chemical Education at the American Chemical Society, and the efforts of the Division leadership were critical to the success of the event. Finally, we thank ACS Books and the Symposium Series for providing this venue and supporting the publication of these activities that often escape traditional means of dissemination. Rory Waterman Department of Chemistry, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405, USA
[email protected] (e-mail)
Andrew Feig Department of Chemistry, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202-3489, USA
[email protected] (e-mail) xi Waterman and Feig; Educational and Outreach Projects from the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative Professional Development ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.
