2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The paper overviews a new IUSE:EDU project to develop a social network analysis (SNA) instrument that will allow STEM education centers to assess the otherwise intangible concept of STEM education capacity. STEM education capacity refers to the ability and empowerment of STEM educators to adapt to changing needs and collectively achieve shared objectives of their organizations. STEM education capacity is an important property of any academic system in STEM disciplines. It characterizes the readiness of the system’s members, communities, and the organization as a whole to adapt educational practices effectively to changing circumstances. However, it is also a latent system property, meaning that STEM education capacity can only be observed when it is in action. Most commonly, academic units see capacity in action during times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. In such times of crisis, it is too late to intervene and develop capacity to more effectively deal with the crisis. We argue that STEM education capacity can be more proactively be observed in mundane interactions between peers. SNA is a promising tool to be able to capture and quantify these interactions, allowing STEM education leaders to anticipate capacity development opportunities to better prepare for times of crisis or change.

The project is in its first phase of three, in which we use qualitative interviewing to identify the kinds of relationships and interactions that matter to STEM education capacity building. We interviewed fifteen engineering faculty and staff involved in the teaching and learning process in one university’s College of Engineering. We aimed to understand who they talked to about teaching and learning, how their relationships developed, and what kinds of conversation they have most often. These interviews helped us deduce how engineering educators grow, learn, change, and help others through their interactions with other educators. The results of this phase of research yielded important insights about the ways networks of educators grow and solidify in STEM higher education. They also revealed the kinds of interactions relevant to individual growth and systemic capacity building.

The next project phase will develop a SNA instrument that can capture the kinds of interactions relevant to STEM education capacity building. The final project phase will validate the instrument via its deployment across the entire College of Engineering. At the end of the project, STEM education leaders will have a tool they can use to assess, study, and grow STEM education capacity in their contexts. We call this tool the CATENA Instrument (Capacity Assessment, Tracking, & Enhancement through Network Analysis). This paper and NSF grantees poster will introduce the project as a whole, and also describe our Phase 1 results.