Key Lessons on Institutionalizing Change

Adrianna Kezar and Elizabeth HolcombeUniversity of Southern California

Institutional Change for STEM Student Success

• Move from departmental or

marginal side program to institutional response for student success• Need for interconnected

strategies• Interconnected strategies

require institutional approach• Stepping stool to ladder

Future: Student Success in STEM

Institutionalizing Change: Process

Keck PKAL Framework

Elements of Framework• Vision (part of proposal)• Landscape and capacity analysis (part of

proposal, but might need to revisit)• Identify and analyze challenges (part of proposal,

but might need to revisit)• Choose strategies and interventions (part of

proposal)• Determine readiness – where we are now• Implementation – 2015-2016• Measure results – 2016-2017• Will be released end of January 2015 in

conjunction with AACU conference

Underlying Assumptions & Tools

• Organizational learning through review of data • Strategic planning• Multi-frame leadership including politics,

relationship-building, attention to culture and other areas• Team approach

Range of Resources and Tools

• Reflection questions• Readiness survey• Chart of range of STEM reform options• Type of data to review • Capacity survey• Implementation planning tool

CSU STEM Collaboratives Quarterly Progress Report

• To be completed and submitted each quarter • Designed to help you implement the STEM

Collaboratives initiative in the most effective way possible • Questions should be used to help focus your

planning meetings with the team • From prior work we know that spending time

filling this out will actually save you time in the long run in terms of a more effective implementation process.

Quarterly Progress Report Questions

1. How often has your team met? 2. What has your team discussed – main points?3. What progress have you made on developing

your plan? Major milestones?4. How are you using data to continue to inform

your efforts? Do you understand the initial problem differently as you have reviewed more data and brought in more people?

5. Have you made any changes to your plan since your last report?

Quarterly Progress Report Questions

6. How are you connecting to the key individuals who will need to be involved to implement your plan? How are you collaborating across departments?7. How are you ensuring that the three aspects of your intervention are connected? What forms of communication, planning, or policy are you putting in place?8. How are you making progress against your own evaluation plan? 9. What are the budget implications of the work? 10. How do policies need to be adjusted to support your plan?

Quarterly Progress Report Questions

11.How are plans for scaling up evolving as you develop your implementation plan?

12.What ideas have you learned from other CSU campuses involved in CSU STEM Collaboratives?

13. What else is on your mind?14. What else have you learned since your last report?

Common Challenges to Implementation & Potential

Solutions• Lack of common vision

• Hold planning retreats, put things in writing for feedback and review, get everyone to articulate vision of team

• Lack of buy in • Create a compelling and well articulated vision

(have a key short document or marketing piece), learning communities, speakers, and incentives

• Lack of multi-level leadership • Begin engaging departments, central

administrators, individual faculty and staff, create a plan around inclusion

Common Challenges to Implementation & Potential

Solutions• Not ready to move forward• Use survey to gauge leadership support,

buy-in, resources, and other key information

• Move forward before team is ready • Ensure enough early conversations with

team, hold a planning retreat, make regular scheduled meetings, identify ways for getting to know each other well

• Remember bridge metaphor!

Common Challenges to Implementation & Potential

Solutions

• Politics (tension regarding department “turf” or resource and faculty workload allocation, people resistant to change) • Bring in an outside speaker or consultant, build

relationships with various key groups and individuals such as department chairs, center for teaching and learning

• Changes in team membership because of sabbatical leaves or other assignments• Plan as much as you can for overlap, if sudden

have a dropbox with key files, team leader orient new people

Common Challenges to Implementation & Potential

Solutions• Strongly held beliefs get in the way—for example,

faculty beliefs about their roles as “gatekeepers” or as the “sage on the stage” as opposed to “gateways” or as “guides on the side • Build learning communities, bring in outside speakers,

challenge norms

• Failure to examine all the implicit assumptions about the problem, possible solutions and approaches• Use data to direct meetings and planning; open

sessions to discuss views

Common Challenges to Implementation & Potential

Solutions• Inadequate resource identification or realization

• Recurrent planning meetings with people in the room who know about budget

• A lack of capacity for data collection and analysis in terms of support from centralized offices of institutional research• Ask for support from CSU STEM Collaboratives

office, build relationship with IR individuals, network with other campuses that have greater data capacity in the project, set up subteams or groups in project around data

Common Challenges to Implementation & Potential

Solutions

• Shifts in upper-level leadership leading to stalled support or redirection of efforts to new campus initiatives• Meet with them to get on radar screen, ensure some

champions speak with new leaders• Failure to connect STEM reform vision at the

departmental level to institutional priorities to get support• Key project leaders meet on an on-going basis with

top leaders, leverage campus-wide priorities and plans

Helpful Resources

• Case studies as part of Keck Project• Project Kaleidoscope offers a yearly summer

leadership institute – consider sending a member of your team• Faculty have developed their leadership skills by

participating in regional and national STEM reform networks such as SENCER (Science Education for New Civic Engagement and Responsibilities; http://www.sencer.net), BioQUEST (http://bioquest.org), and POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning; https://pogil.org)

Helpful Resources

• Advisory board coaches

• Detailed planning timeline with milestones – samples will be provided and if you have one’s you have used and like share with other teams

• Merlot and CSU STEM collaboratives website – summaries of projects, etc.

Institutionalization: Culture Change

Sensemaking Tools: Using Learning to Overcome Resistance

• Buy-in and values change is key for broader buy-in and “real” change – in PKAL Framework was review of data• Create a reading group to review STEM reform

strategies or national reports• Invite STEM reform leaders to give a talk or set

of talks• Develop learning community on evidence-based

practices, supporting students in STEM (some of you have proposed)

Using Learning to Overcome Resistance

• Hold public forums to discuss increasing student success in STEM and ask people to consider their role in this issue• Hold professional development workshops on

factors we know improve URM success in STEM• Create a concept paper on reasons for the need to

increase STEM student success and current barriers on your campus• Collect data related to student success and give to a

cross-campus team to investigate and hold forums for discussion• This all helps elicit beliefs around student success

and challenge them – you have proposed to use some of these – consider more?

Institutionalization: Leadership

Leadership and Change: Four Frames

• To consider different change strategies• To analyze leadership styles and strategies of

yourself and others• To enhance one’s own set of leadership tools

:

Four Frames

Structural

Political orAdvocacy

Hu

man

Rela

tion

s

Sym

bolic

Organization as factory

Organization as extended family

Organization as arena or contest

Organization as tribes, theaters, or

carnivals

Structural Frame

• Rationality, formal roles and rules• Key concepts – roles, rules, goals,

policies, technology, rationality, differentiation, integration, coordination, control• Key processes – division of labor and

coordination of individual activities

Structural Frame

• Organizations exist primarily to accomplish established goals• A structural form can be designed and

implemented to fit any particular set of circumstances• Problems originate from inappropriate

structures or inadequate systems and can be resolved through restructuring or developing new systems

Structural Strategies for Student Success

• Set up a task force or team to focus on STEM reform • Establish formal plan and goals for

increasing student success in STEM• Assess goals around retention of

STEM students

Human Relations Frame

• Fit between people and the organization• Key concepts – needs, skills,

relationships, interpersonal interactions, fit, satisfaction• Key processes – tailoring the

organization to meet individual needs

Human Relations Frame

• Organizations exist to serve human needs • Organizations and people need

each other• When the fit is poor, both will

suffer, individuals will be exploited, or seek to exploit organizations, or both• Human beings find meaningful and

satisfying work, and organizations get human talents and energy – a good fit between both!

Human Relations Strategies for Student Success

• Provide professional development on ways faculty can better support students in STEM• Create mentoring programs

for women and URM in STEM• Provide avenues for staff to

have feedback on plans to improve completion rates

Political or Advocacy Frame

• Key concepts – power, conflict, competition, positive politics, power base• Key processes – bargaining,

negotiation, collation building, agenda setting

Political or Advocacy Frame

• Organizations are coalitions of various individuals and interest groups• There are enduring differences

among coalition members in values, beliefs, information, interests, and perceptions of reality• Most important decisions involve

the allocation of resources

Political Strategies for Student Success

• Form a network with other offices that support student success• Use assessment results to leverage

support for mentoring programs• Identify key champions for STEM

reform • Consider ways to create a coalition

across various support programs aimed at supporting URM and women

Symbolic Frame

• Organizations as tribe, theater and carnival• Key concepts – culture,

symbols, ritual, ceremony, stories, heroes/heroines, myths, charisma• Key processes – common vision,

attending to meaning, devising rituals, ceremonies and symbols

Symbolic Frame

• Symbols form a cultural tapestry or secular myths, rituals, ceremonies, and stories that help people find meaning, purpose and passion• Symbols embody and express the

organization's culture – the interwoven pattern of beliefs, values, practices and artifacts that define for members who they are and how they are to do things

Symbolic Strategies for Student Success

• Have key leaders describe the importance of STEM reform to institutional goals and planning• Relate success in STEM with URM

students to the campus history of being an innovator, to diversity efforts or other established values• Tell stories from your own background

of how women in STEM did not succeed to impress how you do not want this to happen under your watch

Goal: Multi-Frame Thinking

• Create vision or direction for change by analyzing problem and solution through four frames• Create strategy for change acknowledging

all dimensions of organization that may need to be affected

Summary• STEM reform requires an institutional approach to

create student success• There is no recipe for STEM reform – Framework

can help pull together multiple complex pieces of implementing change; knowledge of common challenges helps you navigate• Culture change, broad buy-in and institutionalization

requires sensemaking/learning– changing individual mindsets – developing motivation and understanding• Change/institutionalization also requires a multi-

faceted strategy and approach to leadership using politics, culture, human resources, alteration of values, and campus structures

Additional Resources

References• Kezar, A. (2012). Understanding sensemaking in

transformational change processes from the bottom up. Studies in Higher Education, 65, 761-780.

• Kezar, A. (January, 2012). The path to pedagogical reform in the Sciences: Engaging social movement and mutual adaptation models of change. Liberal Education, (98)1, 14-19.

• Kezar, A. & Elrod, S. (February, 2012). How campuses can facilitate interdisciplinary learning: Leadership lessons from Project Kaleidoscope’s national initiative. Change, 13-21.

• Eckel, P. & Kezar, A. (2003). Key strategies for making new institutional sense. Higher Education Policy, 16(1), 39-53.

• Kezar, A., & Eckel, P. (2002). Examining the institutional transformation process: The importance of sensemaking, inter-related strategies and balance. Research in Higher Education, 43(4), 295-328.

Questions?

Thank you!