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This article presents a model of shared equity leadership that helps transform campus cultures so that students, faculty, staff, and administrators from all backgrounds experience greater inclusion and ameliorates equity gaps. The research team studied campuses that have made diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) a campus-wide priority and made significant progress on their DEI agenda, and found that the key to success is the combination of personal- and organizational-level changes that create a critical mass of employees dedicated to the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The findings also showed that each faculty, staff and administrator must first turn inwards and do their own personal work in order to then turn outwards to transform their institutions. Organizational-level changes (such as hiring diverse leaders, revising reward and incentive structures, and expanding accountability systems to include a focus on DEI) were simultaneously enacted as campus change agents worked on their personal journeys.

An emerging body of literature suggests that systemic efforts to change institutions are enhanced when change actors utilize multiple approaches or strategies to change that capitalize on their individual, team, or organizational assets. Given that little research in higher education has examined the ways leaders deploy multiple strategies in service of change, this study sought to fill this gap in the literature by studying an effort that deployed several strategies or theories of change. Building on emerging literature about the value of multiple theories of change, the study followed the Association of American Universities (AAU) science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) Initiative, which aimed to improve undergraduate teaching in STEM at research universities and utilized multiple theories to inform a complex strategy. This research shows the value of using multiple theories of change and also provides guidance on the best way to harness or use multiple change approaches.

Emerging evidence demonstrates that integrated programs, which combine academic and socioemotional supports and bridge boundaries between academic and student affairs, can improve college success rates for low-income, first-generation college students. This article explores the organizational value of integrated transition programs across several institutions, describing how such programs improve relationships among faculty and staff, streamline processes, promote learning and collaboration, and ultimately create a unified community of support for students, faculty, and staff.

With emerging evidence about the efficacy of integrated support programs for college students and increasing attention nationally to creating such programs, it is important to understand implementation barriers that might affect program success. This study is one of the first to examine implementation of integrated programs, with a particular focus on the challenges related to connecting or aligning programmatic elements across departmental and divisional boundaries. The authors conducted a case study of eight institutions that implemented integrated programs that supported the transition to college for underrepresented students in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) and identified several implementation challenges that are unique to integrated programs.

As colleges and universities strive to change and improve, organizational learning has emerged as an important tool to facilitate change. At the same time, foundations and funders are increasingly promoting scaled change through projects that bring multiple institutions together to learn from one another. However, to date, there is little research on organizational learning in multi-institutional change initiatives or the unique challenges of promoting learning in cross-institutional settings. This paper focuses on one such effort, the AAU STEM Initiative, and outlines barriers to organizational learning that can result when national organizations attempt to facilitate learning among sets of college campuses.

Many current science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) initiatives and projects aim to scale change and encourage more departments, units, and institutions to engage in the evidence-based teaching practices that enhance student learning and outcomes. The authors of this article examined change strategies and networking efforts in a recent study of the Association of American Universities (AAU) undergraduate STEM education initiative (AAU STEM Initiative). What emerged in this study is the particular importance of a "network of networks." Many interviewees in the study noted that there are far fewer networks to support teaching, particularly among prestigious or elite institutions. This suggests that multiple networks are needed that work across the system of higher education to create a broad web of support and value. It is this type of work that AAU engaged in as part of the AAU STEM Initiative--creating a "network of networks." In this article, the authors review the work by AAU to create networks in support of scaled change, the functions that these networks serve, and the promising practices and lessons that others may wish to adopt that will be helpful to further change efforts.

The nature of the faculty has changed dramatically over the last forty years; and today's faculty model no longer meets the needs of students, faculty, or institutions. However, the issue of redefining faculty roles is extremely contentious. In this article we report our examination of open-ended, qualitative data from a larger survey study of stakeholders' beliefs and opinions about new faculty models. We found that different groups, such as non-tenure-track and tenured faculty, deans, and provosts, have constructed very different mental models around the challenges to implementing new faculty roles and that they offered different solutions for moving forward.

Student success in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is a major concern in higher education. While overall 6-year graduation rates are around 60% nationally (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016), only about 40% of students who enter college intending to major in a STEM field complete a STEM degree within 6 years. Studies have identified some of the issues affecting retention in STEM. There has been increased attention on the first two years of college, as many of these issues impact students as they transition to college, and negative experiences are worst in introductory courses. A growing body of research suggests that the problems faced by STEM students are much more multifaceted than currently understood, particularly when trying to serve low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented minority students. Increasingly, there are recommendations for multifaceted interventions that combine several reforms or supports. This article describes a key lesson from the California State University (CSU) STEM Collaboratives project: knowledge that can help underrepresented students in STEM succeed is typically kept in separate organizational silos, and the key to supporting these students is creating a unified community of support that builds bridges between these silos. The authors illustrate how campuses that are able to bridge these silos were able to improve the success of students in STEM in terms of retention, GPA, and psychosocial outcomes, such as sense of belonging and academic self-efficacy.

In recent decades, the employment model in higher education has markedly changed. Tenure-track faculty now represent just about 30 percent of the instructional faculty across all non-profit institutions. Meanwhile, most faculty members who provide instruction at colleges and universities today are non-tenure-track faculty, the majority of them employed as adjuncts on term-to-term contracts, receiving meager compensation and usually no access to benefits, and encountering unsatisfactory working conditions. A mounting body of evidence suggests that institutions' failure to support this segment of faculty is resulting in numerous negative impacts on the enterprise. Specifically, it is detrimental to student learning and outcomes. This includes problems for first-year persistence, retention, transfers from two-to four-year colleges, and graduation rates. There are signs of strain as a shrinking pool of tenure-track faculty takes on an increasing and likely unsustainable level of responsibility for satisfying the multiple obligations of curriculum development, departmental and other forms of service, and conducting research. In the face of these conditions, the Delphi Project has sought to consider different faculty employment models and initiate a nationwide discussion aimed at creating a compelling vision for the future of the professoriate that will: (1) be attractive to new faculty members; (2) more effectively facilitate student learning; (3) respond to external stakeholders' critiques; and (4) better sustain campus and systemic operations, and the health of the profession and overall enterprise. The project emerged from the belief that the best way to begin developing such a vision is to examine the perspectives of a wide array of higher education stakeholders and to identify key areas of agreement that reflect opportunities for groups to work together toward change. (This article is an excerpt of a longer report from The Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success at the University of Southern California.)

The LEAP States initiative was started by the Association of American Colleges and Universities as a formal collaborative of institutions organized at the state or system level that offers educators [...]