Beyond Stipends and Release Time: Providing Incentives to STEM Faculty
Who are the participating STEM faculty? The MIS data show that 1,021 STEM faculty participated in MSP activities during 2005-06. The profile of STEM faculty participants is virtually unchanged from the previous years. Sixty-one percent of the participating STEM faculty are male and 86 percent are white. Three-fourths have tenure or are in tenure-track positions. Fifty-one percent of the STEM faculty are from doctoral-granting institutions. Eleven percent of STEM faculty are from associate colleges or specialized institutions. Overall, the top three STEM fields represented in MSP are mathematics, biological science, and chemistry.
Why do STEM faculty participate? Many STEM faculty acknowledged an altruistic motivation in their MSP participation, in that they are involved "out of the goodness of one's heart" because they are concerned about public education, want to serve the local community, want to make a difference, or simply like to teach. As one PI observed, "it is more about people interest." Clearly, engaging in K-12 reform is not for every STEM faculty member. Many noted that it takes a "certain type of personality" for one to be effective in these settings. An ideal STEM faculty participant often has the following traits: 1) Possesses a high quality disciplinary background and credibility; 2) Is a good STEM higher education instructor and interested in how to teach more effectively; 3) Has a dedication to changing the lives of students; 4) Is open-minded to trying new approaches; 5) Is able to deal with people who are coming from different content-level foundation; 6) Is willing to work in teams; and 7) Is "in touch with their inner adolescent."
What can projects do to attract STEM faculty participation? Although the majority of the participating STEM faculty are highly motivated, it does not mean that they do not need additional incentives to sustain a high level of motivation. In fact, the issue of incentives may be critical to further expansion of STEM faculty engagement, as the current IHE reward structure and tenure policies are not particularly conducive to MSP-like activities.
Projects usually need prolonged STEM faculty participation because they are working with teachers over several years in order to meet MSP related goals. We have found through case studies that motivation for STEM faculty to become engaged in the multiyear life of a project appears to hinge on two necessary and entwined conditions. The first condition is extrinsic and clear. Projects need to provide adequate course release and/or summer salary for participating STEM faculty. All of the 8 case study projects offer stipends and 5 offer release time. In case study interviews, STEM faculty were candid about the MSP meeting their financial and time and requirements.
The second precondition for STEM faculty engagement is an intellectual connection-or the project making the case for the need for substantive STEM faculty content work with K-12 teachers. This is an intrinsic and perhaps underestimated precondition. In case study interviews, seriously engaged faculty did not view their involvement traditionally in terms of outreach or service roles, but instead spoke of what they gained intellectually and professionally from participation. Some examples of this intellectual engagement are as follows: frequent mentions of foundational MSP readings such as How People Learn, references to the IHE faculty professional development they experienced prior to working with teachers, long-term collaboration with K-12 science and mathematics teachers and teacher leaders, insights from the field of science and mathematics education research, participation in a Lesson Study or the examination of student work with an emphasis on student understanding, change in their own disciplinary teaching as a result of the MSP influence, discussions about student preconceptions, cognitive load, and questioning strategies, mention of a forthcoming publication in a STEM education journal, presentations at National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST), and so forth.
Projects that made a substantial case for reform-that is, laid the intellectual groundwork early-on for new roles and models of STEM faculty engagement with teachers-reaped the benefits as the project progressed. Project leadership is critical in establishing such groundwork. Meaningful and prolonged STEM faculty engagement hinged on two motivating conditions being balanced, or as one respondent put it, "the practical piece and the learning piece."
What can higher education institutions do to encourage consequential STEM faculty participation in MSP style partnerships? Sustaining the momentum created by MSP and scaling up the effort requires fundamental changes in university policies and culture. Change in tenure and reward policy is a slow process. According to the case studies, traditional reward structures and faculty perceptions about the status associated with different types of engagement are still considered major barriers for faculty involvement in most MSP-like endeavors. While the majority of the IHEs recognized service or outreach, such activities are generally considered to be a distant third in priority as compared to research and teaching. This presents a serious institutional problem and a major roadblock to involving faculty from the STEM disciplines. Several IHEs we examined from the case studies have begun to define research rising from MSP- like activities as "scholarly." This trend acknowledges that when our best STEM faculty work directly on local or national K-12 challenges, they potentially can pose questions and conduct studies with the same analytic power they use in their discipline-based research.
In addition to tenure and reward policies, a number of strategies are credited with increasing STEM faculty engagement. At the institution level, policies such as elevating the status and weights of outreach in tenure and rewards, change in the hiring process to attract faculty applicants who demonstrate an interest in teaching and outreach, recognizing research in STEM teaching, and creating a dual appointment infrastructure that allows disciplinary faculty to work half time on disciplinary teaching and research and half time on pre/inservice teacher training are often found to be effective. Indeed, one case study site built on an institutionalized dual role for a subset of STEM faculty (housed in the disciplinary departments but holding joint disciplinary and science education appointments) so as to have content expertise and pedagogical awareness in play from the beginning of the project.
