Premium
Northwest Biosciences Consortium RCN‐UBE: Organization and Development of a Faculty Network Leadership Team
Author(s) -
Kruchten Anne,
Baumgartner Erin,
BeadlesBohling Amy,
Brown Jeffrey,
Duncan Jason,
Kayes Lori,
Kiser Stacey,
Seidel Shan,
Shriner Walter,
Stavrianeas Stasinos,
Tillberg Chad
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.31.1_supplement.587.13
Subject(s) - mandate , leadership development , political science , state (computer science) , faculty development , public relations , medical education , management , sociology , professional development , pedagogy , medicine , algorithm , computer science , law , economics
The Northwest Biosciences Consortium (NWBC) is a group of two‐year and four‐year college faculty at both public and private institutions in the State of Oregon. Funded by an NSF RCN‐UBE grant, this group is working towards creating modern, student‐centered, integrated, and investigative introductory biology experiences for all students aligned with the Vision and Change: A Call to Action mandate. The NWBC has held three successful faculty development workshops for faculty in biology education throughout the Pacific Northwest, with our most recent February 2017 workshop focusing on non‐majors biology education. In our fourth year of the grant we now report on the building of our leadership network of faculty at public four year colleges, public two year colleges, and private four year colleges. The network is primarily centered in the state of Oregon, but due to increasing interest among regional institutions and movement of faculty in both tenured and non‐tenured positions, we have learned to coordinate our network beyond the state and even the Pacific Northwest. We report here on the origination of the network, the development of the leadership team in the first two years, growing pains and challenges faced by the team, and recent self‐reflection of the leadership team using Theory of Change models and evaluative interviews conducted by external evaluators. We believe that the story of the leadership team can serve as a model for the development of other leadership teams interested in developing regional faculty networks to reform biology education. Support or Funding Information Supported by the National Science Foundation RCN‐UBE grant (DBI‐1248121).