Overview
We use our Annual Collaboration Meetings to build community across SEISMIC and advance the efforts of the Working Groups. Aligned with the cycle of the academic year, these Annual Meetings take place in the summer and provide important structure for collaboration activities. Working Groups and institutional teams plan their work with these meetings as deadlines for significant stages in their work. Active participants in SEISMIC are encouraged to attend these meetings.
In typical years these are face-to-face meetings, as these play an important role in establishing the social ties needed for any successful collaboration. This is especially true when the community is diverse; coming from many institutions, disciplines, and roles in higher education, with various interests, goals, and identities. SEISMIC has all these traits, which is why annual meetings are a centerpiece of this project. For in-person Annual Meetings, SEISMIC pledges to support the hosting of 4 participants from each member institution.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have had to transition to virtual meetings for 2020 and 2021. While we lose out on some of the value of face-to-face meetings, we gain in that these virtual meetings are easier for many of our members to attend and participate in. As we eventually start to transition back to in-person events, we will remember the lessons learned from these virtual events and design our conferences to take advantage of both formats.
SELC Close-Out Event
SEISMIC will be hosting a 3-day conference (5/30 – 6/1/24) in Ann Arbor, MI on “SEISMIC Action for STEM Department Transformation.” During this conference, SELC participants and other SEISMIC members will share insights and resources related to large-scale transformation of STEM departments, drawing from their experiences in our collaborative projects. We will also develop plans in and around this conference for the next versions of SEISMIC (SEISMIC 2.0) and the SELC project. We are excited to use this event to both wrap up the SELC project and look ahead.
We use our Annual Collaboration Meetings to build community across SEISMIC and advance the efforts of the Working Groups. Aligned with the cycle of the academic year, these Annual Meetings take place in the summer and provide important structure for collaboration activities. Working Groups and institutional teams plan their work with these meetings as deadlines for significant stages in their work. Active participants in SEISMIC are encouraged to attend these meetings.
In typical years these are face-to-face meetings, as these play an important role in establishing the social ties needed for any successful collaboration. This is especially true when the community is diverse; coming from many institutions, disciplines, and roles in higher education, with various interests, goals, and identities. SEISMIC has all these traits, which is why annual meetings are a centerpiece of this project. For in-person Annual Meetings, SEISMIC pledges to support the hosting of 4 participants from each member institution.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have had to transition to virtual meetings for 2020 and 2021. While we lose out on some of the value of face-to-face meetings, we gain in that these virtual meetings are easier for many of our members to attend and participate in. As we eventually start to transition back to in-person events, we will remember the lessons learned from these virtual events and design our conferences to take advantage of both formats.
Past Meetings
Presentations & Workshops
Typically, our Annual Meetings involve presentations from within and outside of the collaboration. Our Working Groups prepare plenary reports to share updates on their progress over the last year. Our project teams develop posters to bring together their efforts. New projects are also proposed during our Annual Meetings via project pitches.
Depending on the interests and challenges of the last year, collaboration members will also prepare workshops or facilitated discussions to help our collaboration collectively work on and imagine new directions for SEISMIC. In 2020, for example, our Constructs Working Group co-chairs led a session titled “Equity & Inclusion Revisited,” which helped us to develop next-level understandings within the collaboration of equity and inclusion in STEM education.
Our presentations given by distinguished scholars outside of SEISMIC offer an opportunity for our collaboration to connect with the broader community of those concerned with STEM equity and inclusion. They also give invited speakers the opportunity to learn more about our collaboration’s activities.
Working Sessions
During our Annual Meetings we also set aside time for our Working Groups to meet and discuss the direction of each group for the upcoming year. In 2019, our Working Groups were tasked with developing project ideas for the collaboration. In 2020, our Working Groups reflected on their organizational structures and how they could be improved, as well as how SEISMIC could foster more inter-Working Group connections.
Panels
In the past we have organized opportunities to hear from our leadership, the Collaboration Council (CoCo), via a panel format. This allows the collaboration to hear directly from the CoCo on future visions, opportunities for further collaboration, and insights they have on SEISMIC. We plan to use panels in future meetings to bring in additional voices and hear from a group of people on a specific topic. This could include a Student Panel on their experiences in intro STEM courses or an Assessments Panel to hear how different stakeholders in higher education are thinking about the future of assessments in a post-COVID world, for example.
Project Retreats
During the week of March 11th, SEISMIC hosted a space for project teams to work at the University of California Irvine. Teams used this in-person meeting time useful to push forward SEISMIC-related work. Click here to learn more!
Weeks of SEISMIC
We hosted local, in-person SEISMIC events on all of our SEISMIC campuses starting in Spring 2022. These local “Weeks of SEISMIC” generated energy and activity around our SEISMIC efforts. There were opportunities to connect in-person again with SEISMIC colleagues and share the innovative work we have accomplished over the last several years. Click here to learn more!