Additional Student Partnership Work

HSTEM logo of faces with HSTEM Being human in STEM text
The CTL partners with faculty, staff, and students to co-design and evaluate the impact of course curriculum and pedagogical practices. Assessment of the impact of HSTEM focuses in large part on the gathering of student narratives about their experiences and sense of thriving in STEM, as well as helping faculty and staff reflect on how their own thinking about themselves and their identities in STEM. Further, HSTEM is working to facilitate ongoing campus partnerships between college departments and HSTEM student partners, in order to support students as campus change-agents. Amherst College colleagues have presented this work, alongside several student co-authors and colleagues at other institutions, at multiple conferences. 
 
"Being Human in STEM" book cover
Published Guide for Faculty and Administrators

The following is an excerpt from Caroline Hanna's article. Read the full news release here. 

Nearly eight years ago, the four-day Amherst Uprising sit-in in Frost Library inspired the creation of a biology/chemistry special topics course called “Being Human in STEM” (abbreviated HSTEM). That class, in turn, spawned an educational movement. And now it’s the subject of a book.

Authored by Sarah Bunnell, former associate director and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) specialist in Amherst’s Center for Teaching and Learning; Sheila Jaswal, professor of chemistry and interim chief equity and inclusion officer; and Megan Lyster, former instructional designer for experiential learning in the Center for Community Engagement (now assistant director of the Wurtele Center for Leadership at Smith College), Being Human in STEM: Partnering with Students to Shape Inclusive Practices and Communities is a guide for faculty members and administrators looking to better support students of color and other marginalized groups “who have felt unwelcome and unsupported in their past STEM experiences,” the introduction explains.

The STEM Incubator Program
The CTL's work with the STEM Incubator has focused on pedagogical design as well as methods of assessing how participating in this six-week, interdisciplinary, cohort-based program contributes to students' sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and agency in STEM. Students' reflections on their past experiences in STEM and their newly gained confidence and empowerment in STEM have served as critical arguments for continuing and expanding this program at the college. Dr. Sarah Bunnell and Professor Marc Edwards presented an assessment of the pilot year of the Incubator, focused on student experience and narrative, at the Association of American Colleges and Universities Diversity, Equity, and Student Success conference.
Additional Faculty Examples
There are many faculty across campus who are partnering with their students in compelling and impactful ways. Check out our innovative teaching practices web page to see some of their approaches.

Pedagogical Research Associates

Course Development Seminar Analysis, Fall 2020 - Present

In a collaboration with DEI and educational development expert Dr. Kathy Takayama, the CTL hired three students to partner on analyzing data from the 2020 course development seminar in which 155 faculty participated for six weeks. The faculty engaged in reading, assignments, weekly discussion boards and synchronous topical workshops. Kathy was a facilitator of two 30-faculty cohorts in the summer seminar and then became a fantastic partner and consultant for the foundation of this research project. We developed a theory of change framework on and through which we articulated an (iterative) aspirational statement and then built our assessment strategy. We have been lucky to be working closely with Tylar Matsuo ('24), Jessica Yu ('22), and Ryan Yu ('22) who have completed many hours of qualitative coding, social network analysis (including beautiful and insight producing visualizations), literature review, interpretation, and report writing (coming soon!).

Student Focus Group Project, Fall 2018 - Spring 2019

Student Focus Group Training

PRA Reflections Video and Transcript

During the Fall of 2018 the CTL engaged two specific areas of exploration in order to support broader equity and inclusion initatives at Amherst College.

The first was to gain insight into how students experienced course level feedback mechanisms. This tied into the College's efforts to create an effective common evaluation form which was collaboratively developed over the academic year and passed by the faculty as a pilot in Spring of 2019. Riley Caldwell-O'Keefe partnered with pedagogical research associates Julia Turner ('19), Marco Trevino ('20), and Ryan Yu ('22) on this project.

The second was to better understand effective inclusive pedagogies in STEM. This project was informed by the ongoing CTL partnership with the HSTEM initiative. Sarah Bunnell and Thea Kristenson partnered with Billy Jang ('19) and Kelly Kim ('19) on this project. 

These five Amherst students and the team staff engaged in training at Southern New Hampshire University with Charlie Blaich and Kathy Wise of the Center of Inquiry at Wabash College for students to take the lead on designing and implementing student focus group projects. The students worked in their respective teams over the course of the fall to develop the research question and protocols and then run a total of almost 20 student focus groups in the Fall of 2018. The students then transcribed, coded, and discussed the focus group conversations before making recommendations and participating in larger institutional conversations relevant to their focus.