Change Remains Constant: Faculty Mini Grants Facilitate Undergraduate Curricular Reform At The Colorado School Of Mines

Educational institutions resist change, including those in engineering and science. Elaine Seymour’s work on change in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields identifies the locus of change as critical to its success; that which emerges both from top down and bottom up is the most lasting and effective. [1] Seymour and Hewitt also identify the need for change: without it, engineering and science programs may lose some of their best students to other fields. [2] At Colorado School of Mines (CSM), undergraduate curricular reform emerged from faculty committees and administrative imperatives to improve education, university-wide. Between 1997 and 2001, CSM disseminated faculty mini-grants to enhance classroom innovation and adaptation. Funded proposals focused on curricular reform, better classroom use of technology, and advancing engineering education. Individual faculty members or teams applied for up to $5000 to design, develop, and/or deliver courses and materials. A faculty committee granted the awards based on the proposals’ ♦ educational soundness, ♦ meeting essential criteria in CSM’s revised curriculum, ♦ feasibility for completion within a summer session. As seed money for change, the program was a good institutional investment because the grants affected the faculty recipients, their colleagues and departments, and students at all levels. Within Seymour’s change framework, this program encouraged buy-in for the curricular reform from top-down and bottom-up. [1] Every academic program on campus received funding, sparking broad interest in engineering education among disciplinary faculty. P ge 999.1 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education The paper discusses three cases and their roles in changing CSM’s engineering-education landscape and explores the mini-grants’ long-term effect on the CSM curriculum.