Lessons Learned about Building an ASSERTive Community

One of our observations in this lessons learned paper is that there is underwhelming faculty development related to scholarship other than on how to submit and sometimes how to write proposals. This de facto service model misses everything outside of the proposal-writing process; which is the least important, but is often the most celebrated, rewarded, and supported phase. Inspired by national Centers for Teaching & Learning, and modeled after the emerging Communities of Transformation literature, we are piloting a Center for Transformative Research at Boise State University. The vision of our Center is to build and sustain an ASSERTive community -for Aligning Stakeholders and Structures to Enable Research Transformation (ASSERT). Faculty members from across campus were recruited to participate as fellows to explore what it means to be a scholar and how to move a bold and transformative idea forward. To minimize the energy to apply, the application process included an Instagram post, Twitter response, and/or haiku. Fifteen faculty were selected for the cohort of fellows. To ensure university-wide accountability, a memorandum of understanding was signed by each fellow, as well as their Provost, Vice President for Research & Economic Development, College or School Dean, and Department Chair. Once signed, each fellow was asked to complete a survey and participate in an individual structured interview with the PI and co-PI. These allowed us to determine the specific needs of each fellow, providing validation or perhaps challenging our a priori observations of risk inhibitors at Boise State that prevent germination of bold ideas. By studying the fellows, we were able to look at what may inhibit them from taking risks – personal attributes and beliefs, and structural and cultural issues within their academic units, the university, and in their academic fields. Based on the survey results and individual structured interviews, programming was developed and tailored to the needs of the fellows. An off-campus retreat was held. In addition to the off-campus retreat, on-campus workshops were custom-made for the fellows and included: (a) how to germinate transformative ideas by no longer seeing ideas as precious; (b) how to become an effective collaborator by adapting the Toolbox Project; (c) how to move ideas forward by drawing on the game “Chutes & Ladders” where the chutes represent common obstacles and the ladders are shortcuts; (d) how to manage time at work, and in life; and (e) how to classify, understand, and know when and how to implement intentional versus emergent research strategies. As a culminating activity, the faculty then pitched their ideas to university and community leadership. In conjunction with this pitch event, an advocate was assigned to each fellow to help connect their ideas to future resources. From our motivation to our faculty application to our custom learning community, lessons learned will be shared via a lightning talk. Background and Motivation In a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF; award no. 1745944), we laid out our plan to adopt practices from the instructional realm—a core area of the university where there is a well-accepted realization of an elevated need for professional development, institutional, cultural, and structural transformation—into the scholarship development realm. Most campuses have a Center for Teaching and Learning that provides a portfolio of support programs for faculty as they develop their teaching identity and grow into effective educators. Initially, they began with individual faculty experts serving as consultants to other faculty to help them improve their teaching skills. Then, in response to student empowerment movements and faculty grassroots efforts, American campuses built the infrastructure to improve student learning. In addition, in the current times, these units have recognized their role in institutional transformation and strategic alignment around the teaching and learning mission of the university [1]. Historically, faculty professional development at US universities centered on academic scholarship—originating with the faculty sabbatical at Harvard University and leading to support for individual faculty researchers through research administrative units [1]. Today, most campuses have a Vice President for Research whose office supports grant writing, proposal development, team formation, and communication outreach about funding opportunities [2]. According to the National Organization of Research Development Professionals, “Research Development professionals serve as ‘rainmakers’ who catalyze and facilitate team science in response to the external funding landscape.” From our perspective, this statement misses the fact that the rain is usually a consequence of the environment. Further, due to the financial focus of where they work, many Research Development professionals often lack the mission or experience to support psychological safety, design thinking, and Communities of Transformation (CoTs) [3]. As a result, their offices are designed to be responsive rather than developmental; they help faculty and teams respond to calls for funding rather than provide the professional development necessary for a team to be ready for that call or to help them define the transformative scholarship that will go into the call. Indeed, on most campuses, there is no faculty development related to research other than on how to submit and sometimes how to write a proposal. This service structure is missing everything before and after the proposal-writing phase and excludes faculty that do not seek or require external funding sources. The academy needs a new model for faculty professional development around research. Because the richest place to find transformative research is often in the interstitial space between well-defined areas of inquiries, the ability to formulate such questions often requires a team of researchers, each with their respective disciplinary lens, expertise, and epistemology. However, it is not enough for researchers to simply come together naively, but rather it requires a collaborative endeavor to negotiate the unknown territory of a new line of investigation and to craft a research question that can be explored. Realistically, most academics do not possess the agency or capacity to germinate transformative ideas nor do they work in a psychologically safe environment that supports true intellectual risk taking. We are piloting the Center for Transformative Research at Boise State University to tackle these issues. The current grant funds the development and support of a faculty learning community cohort of 10–15 faculty each year. The goal of this work is to help the cohort germinate and move their bold ideas forward within Boise State. Upon success, we envision the Center to grow to include activities parallel to those often found in Centers for Teaching and Learning, ranging from faculty consultancy and professional development to institutional change. Below we discuss our experiences with our second of three funded cohorts funded by the National Science Foundation.