2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Our study examines a set of organizational change processes that serve to facilitate and amplify the combined effects of interventions intended to promote systems change for equity in higher education contexts. Previous work documents the types of interventions that have been used to promote equity in faculty career trajectories and outcomes (e.g., Bilimoria & Liang, 2012; De Welde & Stepnick, 2015; Laursen & Austin, 2020; Stewart, Malley & LaVaque-Manty, 2007, Stewart & Valian, 2018). Our current work builds on this body of empirical and applied knowledge to identify, make visible, and leverage the often overlooked processes associated with system-wide change initiatives. These processes – cultivating a leadership team, planning for sustainability, developing robust communications plans, and weathering institutional leadership changes, among others – support, strengthen, connect, and synergize individual interventions for increased success and impact, hence we refer to them as "scaffolding processes" to emphasize their connective and supportive effects. Change agents who attend to these processes are better able to “engineer” successful system-wide transformation.

Supported by National Science Foundation's Human Resource Directorate (HRD) Division, we study NSF-supported ADVANCE Institutional Transformation projects and other projects in science and engineering education that take systems approaches to change. We gather data through group interviews with seasoned change leaders who together represent a variety of projects and roles. Our poster will describe the relevance of the change processes that we have identified and will offer an illustrative example of one such process, strategic use of data. In brief, we find that data can be used to diagnose problems, signify urgency, refine interventions, and make a case for sustainability, but it is important to understand the audience, and to engage them with making meaning from the data. The research aims to make new theoretical contributions about systems change projects in higher education and to provide change agents who lead complex, systemic change projects with insight on how to conceptualize and organize their work to maximize its effectiveness.