At the UC Irvine Week of SEISMIC, which took place March 14-16 in 2022, participants were able to spend time working on two papers and one grant proposal. “It was the first time we were meeting anyone in-person from the team,” Denaro says. Collaboration within SEISMIC had been primarily online during 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. Attendees were also able to visit the new Anteater Learning Pavillion, which features classrooms designed to support active learning.

Multiple SEISMIC members, many within the Measurement Working Group, designed a collaborative proposal between institutions, with the final proposal including the University of Maryland, Purdue University, University of Michigan, Arizona State University, and University of California Irvine. The proposal outlines a plan to identify faculty and institutional “Bright Spots” that promote equitable STEM student success. While the proposal was originally declined, the team resubmitted a revised version in July of this year. Participants also worked to develop a paper on the findings of a parallel analysis involving five SEISMIC member institutions. This paper was just recently accepted for publication in CBE-Life Sciences Education, and will be available in the near future (Denaro et al., in press). Finally, SEISMIC members also worked on a paper exploring student pathways in STEM curricula, which was published in Frontiers in Education in 2023 (Fiorini et al., 2021). Learn more about the UC Irvine Week of SEISMIC with a blogpost by SEISMIC Project Manager Nita Tarchinski here.

At Arizona State University’s Week of SEISMIC, which took place November 8-11 in 2022, Brownell was focused on sharing the research that has been done as a result of SEISMIC. “We had good attendance, people got excited about the research, and I feel like we met most of our goals,” Brownell shares. One of the highlights was a campus-wide Natural Sciences Inclusion Summit, which was integrated into ASU’s Week of SEISMIC and has since grown into an annual event. Multiple SEISMIC members gave “lightning talks” at this event on topics such as exploring how research and teaching affect science graduate student mental health (Katelyn Cooper) and the need to move beyond numbers to consider racial equity (W. Carson Byrd). Now heading into its third year, the summit draws over 200 attendees. There was also time built in for the Constructs Working Group to collaborate in-person, and for presentations such as Dr. Susan Cheng’s talk on using a systems approach to increase DEI initiatives. To learn more about the ASU Week of SEISMIC, you can read a blogpost by Nita Tarchinski here.

Still, even with the attention to detail in planning, time is always of the essence. “We had all this momentum, and we wanted to keep going,” Denaro says. The three days just flew by! Additionally, Brownell found it difficult to work around faculty’s busy schedules and find opportunities to engage with them. Denaro also notes that having Weeks of SEISMIC every two months made it difficult to attend more than one or two. “You only have so much bandwidth,” she explains.

Despite the challenges associated with finding time for events like these, both Brownell and Denaro feel they are great opportunities for in-person collaboration and sharing important work and the two would support a revival if SEISMIC 2.0 were to happen. Denaro would like to see a future iteration of the Weeks of SEISMIC spread out a bit more, simply to allow for even more people to attend. It’s a tricky balance, with 10 institutions to visit, but it’s fantastic to see people want to attend multiple SEISMIC events!

I myself attended the Michigan State University and Indiana University Weeks of SEISMIC. However, to gain some additional perspective, I spoke to Emily Bonem and Madeleine Gonin about their experiences with the events. Emily Bonem is the Assistant Director within the Center for Instructional Excellence at Purdue University, and on top of helping plan for the Purdue Week of SEISMIC, also attended the University of Michigan and Indiana University Weeks of SEISMIC. Madeleine Gonin is the Assistant Director for Inclusive Teaching at Indiana University Bloomington. Gonin attended the Purdue Week of SEISMIC and helped with the planning for the Indiana University Week of SEISMIC. Bonem and Gonin had many overlapping goals in mind for attending the Weeks of SEISMIC, such as making new connections and learning about local campus work. Bonem also recalls attending the events to work on the Bright Spots project and write an academic paper collaboratively. Similarly, Gonin remembers looking for ways to contribute to SEISMIC projects.

Gonin’s first Week of SEISMIC was Purdue University’s in April of 2022. This was Gonin’s first SEISMIC event, so she was primarily focused on understanding the collaboration as a whole and networking with members. She was wondering how she could contribute, she recalls: “I was going in with a little bit of imposter syndrome, like, do I really belong here? Do I have something to contribute?” Setting those worries aside, she enjoyed hearing instructors discuss their experiences with Purdue’s “Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation” (IMPACT) program. She also had the chance to meet plenty of people from the SEISMIC community. Gonin left the event feeling enthusiastically welcomed and empowered with new ideas for how she could participate in SEISMIC. What’s more, she became motivated to provide an especially welcoming community for the Indiana University Week of SEISMIC.

“We were trying to introduce SEISMIC more broadly to our campus,” Bonem recalls about the Purdue Week of SEISMIC. With 24 unique events, it was a packed week filled with opportunities to learn about the important work being done within SEISMIC and at Purdue. Bonem credits Chantal Levesque-Bristol, Executive Director of the Center for Instructional Excellence, with the event’s success: “We did a lot… [she] really planned a lot of events for that week.” To learn more about the events at the Purdue University Week of SEISMIC, you can read a blogpost by Nita Tarchinski here.

The Michigan State University Week of SEISMIC was my first in-person SEISMIC experience. While I had joined SEISMIC in the Summer of 2021 as an undergraduate researcher, the work I did for that was entirely online. Now, as a program assistant, I was meeting the collaboration I would be supporting face-to-face. The MSU Week of SEISMIC took place May 16-19, 2022, and the event kicked off with presentations on STEM education and one-minute “lightning introductions” from interested participants of themselves and the work they’re involved in. I was mesmerized by what I was learning: I had just graduated from MSU two weeks before, and seeing the world of higher education from a non-student perspective was looking at something I considered familiar to me in an entirely new light. To learn more about the specific activities that took place at Michigan State University Week of SEISMIC, you can read a blogpost by Nita Tarchinski here.

Gonin, Bonem, and I all attended the Indiana University Week of SEISMIC, which took place October 18-20, 2022. We all played slightly different roles: I was coming to help coordinate activities and meet more members, Bonem was coming to network and work on the Bright Spots project, and Gonin was helping run the show as a member of the host institution. One of the most memorable sessions of the event was the student panel, moderated by Nikeetha Farfan D’Souza, Associate Director for Student Support & Bias Response at Indiana University. “It was a bit of a lightbulb there… It’s important for instructors to hear from groups of students that are not their own students,” Gonin says. Students give feedback differently when their grade could be impacted. Additionally, hearing from many different voices is integral to transforming students’ learning experiences in STEM. “Everyone is helping to bring a different puzzle piece together to make a better final picture of what’s going on and how we can be helpful,” Gonin explains. This message was echoed throughout the event, as we also heard from instructors, graduate students, and university leadership.

As a bonus, Stefano Fiorini took attendees to visit his wife’s Pottery House Studio and practice their painting skills! Susan Snyder was a fantastic host, and I was able to decorate a beautiful bowl. Bonem claims this was one of the most memorable parts of the experience. “I think it was some good SEISMIC bonding,” she explains. To learn more about the specific activities that happened at the IU Week of SEISMIC, check out this article I wrote on the event.

As SEISMIC 1.0 nears its conclusion, both Gonin and Bonem hope there can be future versions of the Weeks of SEISMIC. “I have enjoyed all of the big SEISMIC events,” Gonin says. “And I love them because they’re all really well organized… I mean, it makes such a big difference.” Similarly, Bonem says the Weeks of SEISMIC were a great way to make connections between the local institutions. “It’s cool to see what’s happening on other campuses,” she explains. As a remote worker, this also gives Bonem time to see colleagues from Purdue in-person that she normally only sees online.

I would also like to see another iteration of the Weeks of SEISMIC in the future. These events did wonders for my imposter syndrome, and the people I met at these events are people I work with today. These events also reaffirmed my own passions for science communication and research focused on STEM higher education. Importantly, they also allowed me to learn much more about the work within and surrounding SEISMIC. I’m confident that there are many others interested in learning about opportunities for new collaborations and new directions for STEM education research.

To learn more about the SEISMIC Scholars Program, I spoke with Vanessa Woods, who has been a member of the organizing team since the beginning. Woods is an Associate Teaching Professor within the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara. She has always had an interest in undergraduate research, which is proven to help students engage in deep learning and increase engagement and retention. Participating in undergraduate research experiences can also be a tool for transformation for students from underrepresented backgrounds, allowing them to feel like they belong in STEM. “They’re very interested and very passionate, but they don’t necessarily feel they have a ton of the skills they need… I don’t actually see it that way.”

Undergraduate research experiences open many doors for undergraduate students, such as graduate school and career opportunities. However, these experiences are often inaccessible for students who must work to support themselves, as research internships are often unpaid, or don’t pay very much. Woods had noticed that various programs at UC Santa Barbara had tried to address this in the past, but often failed to offer an adequate stipend. With other members of the organizing team, Woods began envisioning a program where SEISMIC Scholars could be paid for 10 hours of remote work a week, compensating students for their efforts and allowing them to hold other jobs if needed. While many SEISMIC efforts focus on course-level or department-level changes, the SEISMIC Scholars Program provided a way for members of SEISMIC to make an impact at the individual student-level.

The organizing team decided early on that this undergraduate research experience would be virtual to allow for students from all SEISMIC institutions to participate. Woods notes that when designing virtual experiences, one must be intentional about setting up programming and engagement. Woods and the organizing team knew that they wanted the SEISMIC Scholars Program to focus on three aspects: mentorship, research, and professional development. While it was a lot of work during the first year – from planning meetings to building a curriculum to designing assessments – the organizing team took it in stride.

Finding mentors for the Scholars was always easy, Woods recalls. “Our SEISMIC network has very cool, generous, wicked smart researchers.” And these researchers were able to embrace their own mentoring styles, meeting with their mentees at least once a week, sometimes in group calls, sometimes individually. Because of these Scholar mentors, students were able to participate in a variety of projects within SEISMIC. Depending on the Scholar’s assigned project and mentor, students learned about research methods such as qualitative coding, working with RStudio, literature review, and grant writing. Woods would always team up with Maggie Safronova, another member of the organizing team from the University of California Santa Barbara, and the two would train Scholars to investigate written survey responses, searching for tones and messages to code.

I also spoke to Karen Lin, an undergraduate student at the University of California Davis who was a SEISMIC Scholar in the 2023 Program. Lin is majoring in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and is set to graduate in a few months. Lin told me that she heard about the SEISMIC Scholars Program from one of her professors, who was encouraging students to apply for the opportunity. Lin, who also works as a tutor, learned that SEISMIC emphasizes making STEM more accessible. This resonated with her, and she was eager to learn about being a better teacher, especially for underrepresented students. Lin’s mentor was Nita Tarchinski, SEISMIC’s Project Manager. Tarchinski taught both Lin and fellow SEISMIC Scholar Glory Figueroa about the grant writing process, including literature review and drafting content. Lin says that this has been incredibly helpful for her, as many of the labs she is exploring are interested in these skills. “It isn’t really emphasized within the usual college curriculum,” Lin adds. Together, Lin and Figueroa worked with Tarchinski to prepare for a grant proposal focused on improving student success for transfer students.

Woods says that the organizing team thought a lot about what the professional development portion of the program should look like. The team wanted to be conscious of the needs of marginalized groups of students, such as first-generation students or students from low-income families – groups of students that the Scholars program was designed to support. This led to many planned topics of discussion: aspects of hidden curriculum (a term used to describe the unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons students learn in education), jargon used in higher education, how to read research articles, and how to create a CV. Mentors and scholars met once a week to tackle this content. “We felt it was really important to help them think about their skills and strengths,” Woods says. Additionally, the organizing team has found multiple speakers over the years who were encouraging and open to talking with students.

The SEISMIC Scholars Program experience concludes with a Poster Showcase, where students present the research they’ve done during the summer. “That’s my favorite part of all of it,” Woods says. As the MC of the virtual poster session, she has each student pick their “walk-up song”, playing it for the audience to hear as students set up their screens for sharing. Students are encouraged to invite friends and family so they can show off their hard work. “It was a good way to learn how to synthesize and organize the information that we’ve been researching,” Lin says. She also notes that the presentation gave her an additional accomplishment for her CV.

 Woods is proud of the work both the organizing teams and Scholars have accomplished each year of the program. Looking toward SEISMIC 2.0, she hopes the SEISMIC Scholars Program is something that can continue. She also dreams of a version of the program that can have a bigger in-person component. The 2023 Scholars were able to meet at that year’s SEISMIC Annual Meeting, and Woods saw how impactful it was to their overall experience. “I think it’s like the icing on the cake,” Woods says. When Lin thinks about a future iteration of the Scholars program, she says she hopes the program can be longer. “We have the space to ask questions from professionals who have been doing this work, so having the chance to do a deeper dive would have been nice.” Even without an increased length or additional in-person component, the SEISMIC Scholars Program has provided 34 undergraduate students with summer research experiences focused on building research skills, offering mentorship, and providing networking opportunities.

Recently, CEDER completed a summative evaluation of SEISMIC (which will soon be available on the SEISMIC website). To celebrate this and learn more about CEDER’s work for SEISMIC as a whole, I reached out to Vicki Bigelow, an Evaluation Coordinator within CEDER and lead evaluator for SEISMIC. As an evaluation coordinator, Bigelow provides support to U-M administration, units, and individuals looking to evaluate their education programs and/or research. She plans and conducts evaluations, writes evaluation plans for grant proposals, and shares her evaluations across various platforms. Additionally, Bigelow also hosts workshops on creating logic models and designing programs. When I met with Bigelow, she was able to tell me more about CEDER’s work with SEISMIC and how the collaboration has adapted to the feedback they’ve received.

During the first year of their partnership, CEDER worked with SEISMIC to collect and analyze data that detailed how SEISMIC was functioning in areas such as recruitment, activities, and effectiveness. This type of evaluation is known as process evaluation, where the focus is on assessing whether activities or processes are achieving the program’s goals and mission. The evaluation team looked at how money was being spent, the impact of events such as the Speaker Exchange Program and the first Summer Meeting, and structures within SEISMIC like the Collaboration Council and Working Groups. “Qualitative research has three components: interviews, observations, and document analysis. I’d say we’ve done all of those to some degree,” Bigelow says. CEDER then identified links between their findings and appropriate short-term program outcomes. This led SEISMIC to develop themes for Working Groups to focus on.

Because SEISMIC has adapted in response to CEDER’s feedback, the scope of SEISMIC’s evaluation has evolved over time. This is known as a developmental evaluation approach. When done correctly, developmental evaluation can be quite an involved process, Bigelow explains. However, this method allows for continuous adaptation and real-time feedback.

Below is a graphic by CEDER summarizing the focus areas of SEISMIC’s evaluation over time:

When reflecting on SEISMIC’s responses to feedback they’ve received, Bigelow can recall her work surrounding the 2021 Summer Meeting clearly. During the event, which was virtual, participants began giving feedback that made it clear they didn’t feel involved. This resulted in SEISMIC changing the agenda of the meeting to include a discussion about how SEISMIC was helping and/or hurting efforts to reduce collective harm and ways in which setbacks could be addressed. Participants gave feedback anonymously, and CEDER analyzed their responses. Common themes included calls to clarify and organize around a common set of goals and objectives as well as placing diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEI-J) at the center of SEISMIC’s efforts.

In response to this discussion and data analysis, the SEISMIC Collaboration Council released a letter addressing the feedback members had given and detailing the steps the Collaboration Council would be taking to improve the collaboration as a whole. This included the creation of a SEISMIC Task Force dedicated to reexamining SEISMIC’s structures, procedures, and practices. “Sometimes data analysis is a plan… Other times, it’s in real-time,” Bigelow says. At the 2022 Summer Meeting, members reported that they had noticed positive changes related to DEI-J, but that efforts needed to continue.

Another evaluation effort Bigelow remembers working on is the Weeks of SEISMIC, which provided local members with opportunities to become more involved with SEISMIC work and share their own work with their community. The Weeks of SEISMIC began in 2022 due to both calls for more local campus activity and institutions beginning to open back up after the start of COVID-19. “It’s something that was a big shift as a result of what they were hearing from [our] analysis,” Bigelow says. From both surveys and interviews, CEDER determined that these events were valuable to participants as they provided relevant sessions, in-person work time, and opportunities to socialize.

Bigelow attributes much of the success of CEDER and SEISMIC’s partnership to Project Manager Nita Tarchinski. Having someone to visit each of the SEISMIC institutions and build “that level of trust at the site level” was immensely helpful with qualitative data collection. Additionally, Bigelow credits Tarchinski with being great at seeing the bigger picture and avoiding pitfalls such as scope creep, where more and more focuses are added to an evaluation plan.

Overall, CEDER has analyzed 45 interviews, 679 survey responses, 12 focus groups, and 261 sticky notes. This has led to the creation of 15 reports, 9 institution posters, 7 non-traditional reports (such as snapshots, thematic analyses, and other deliverables designed to provide rapid feedback or retain participants’ voices), 6 slide decks, and 1 packet. The feedback generated from these analyses drove strategic changes within SEISMIC, allowing the collaboration to more effectively promote equity and inclusion in STEM education.

As SEISMIC 1.0 draws to a close and CEDER’s work with the collaboration ends, Bigelow says she will miss working with the project. Still, she’s proud of the work that the partnership accomplished: “This project has been especially good at using their feedback and data to make decisions about what needs to be revised or what they should continue.” The feedback and recommendations CEDER has provided will remain integral as we think about what a future multi-institutional SEISMIC 2.0 collaboration should look like.

Solanki’s pilot podcast was a hit, and she was motivated by this success. She wanted to create a second podcast, hosting episodes focused on efforts SEISMIC members were engaging with. Solanki invited Anna James, currently Teaching Professor within the Marine Science Institute at the University of California Santa Barbara, to be a co-host on the podcast. At the time, James was a postdoctoral scholar within the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network at UCSB. Additionally, James and Solanki had volunteered to be SEISMIC’s Theme Leaders, who work to develop themes that tie together knowledge gained through projects and encourage collaboration across working groups. Establishing the podcast as an official Theme, the two decided that the aim of the episodes should be to increase the exposure of ongoing efforts within the collaboration.

Together, Solanki and James thought about the current SEISMIC projects and how they could inform members about what their colleagues are doing. At the same time, they also wanted to make the podcast accessible to a broader audience. “We also wanted to have a diverse group,” Solanki says. “Not only asking folks that many members [already] know, but also reaching out to folks that maybe are not as known within the community.”

Filming the podcast episodes themselves was a breeze, Solanki recalls. She enjoyed interviewing guests and having the opportunity to help share research with listeners. “Everyone was so gracious with their time and excited to talk about their research and share their experience with us.” It was also useful to have a co-host to bounce ideas off, and go back-and-forth with during interviews. Additionally, having someone to share hosting responsibilities helped with the overall workload.

The Office Hours Podcast consists of five episodes. Below is a table summarizing each episode:

1: Undergraduate Research

Katelyn Cooper and Nikeetha Farfan D’Souza share their work related to undergraduate research. Cooper discusses persistence in undergraduate research and D’Souza discusses cultural and educational disparities in undergraduate student experiences and research.

3: Leadership

Natasha Turman and Brian Sato highlight the value of interdisciplinary collaboration and shared leadership in STEM education. They discuss their insights on building successful teams.

5: Technology in the Classroom

Perry Samson describes two of his projects (LectureTools and Backchannels) that are aimed at enhancing student engagement in large lecture halls.

In addition to learning about the work of many SEISMIC members, Solanki also learned more about the process of creating a podcast. “[The episodes] require a lot of effort on the host, you know, to read about the person and read their material,” Solanki says. While she enjoyed the process and was enthusiastic throughout, she acknowledges that not having a production team increased the workload significantly.

If SEISMIC 2.0 were to have a podcast of its own, Solanki believes it’s important to feature experts from a variety of fields, and keep the content accessible and interesting for a broad audience. However, she acknowledges that this pursuit isn’t without challenges: “What’s hard is finding topics that are enjoyable and interesting to a broad audience.” Still, she believes that by asking members what they’re interested in hearing about and who they’d like to hear from, plenty of suitable interview candidates can be found. “The podcast is less about dissemination of one specific intervention and more about being another way to talk to experts,” Solanki says. As SEISMIC has a diverse community filled with experts in various topics, there are plenty of members to highlight, and I’m hopeful that the opportunity to do that through a podcast comes in SEISMIC 2.0.