Talking Science: Undergraduates' Everyday Conversations as Acts of Boundary Spanning That Connect Science to Local Communities.

Biologists produce knowledge that can be applied to both global and personal challenges. Thus, communicating this knowledge to the general public is becoming increasingly important. One way information can move between different communities is through boundary spanners. Boundary spanners are individuals embedded in both communities who can communicate information known by one community to the other. We explore whether undergraduate biology majors can act as boundary spanners connecting their biology departments to laypeople in their personal networks. We conducted 20 interviews with upper-division first-generation college students at a large Hispanic-serving institution. These students were engaging in everyday conversations about science with people in their personal networks. They engaged in behaviors that characterize boundary spanners: translating scientific language into more common language and knowledge building, that is, providing background concepts that community members need to understand a topic. Finally, students were sometimes perceived as credible resources and sometimes were not. We explore some of the causes of this variation. The boundary spanning of undergraduates could help address one of the major challenges facing the scientific community: spreading the use of scientific knowledge in personal and policy decision making.

Department-Level Instructional Change: Comparing Prescribed versus Emergent Strategies.

Academic departments are thought to be highly productive units of change in higher education. This paper investigates department-level instructional change via case studies analyzed with two change frameworks. One framework embodies prescribed change, emphasizing leader actions. The other framework embodies emergent change, emphasizing participants' responsibilities. Analysis identified successes and missed opportunities. The results provide guidance on how change agents might create vision, motivate participants, build momentum, and institutionalize change. Through familiarity with multiple change frameworks, a change agent can plan change initiatives that best fit with the local goals and context, thus increasing the likelihood of success.

Finding the leaders: an examination of social network analysis and leadership identification in STEM education change.

BACKGROUND: Social network analysis (SNA) literature suggests that leaders should be well connected and can be identified through network measurements. Other literature suggests that identifying leaders ideally involves multiple methods. However, it is unclear using SNA alone is sufficient for identifying leaders for higher education change initiatives. We used two sets of data, teaching discussion network data taken at three different times and respondent nominations for leaders, to determine whether these two methods identify the same individuals as leaders. RESULTS: Respondent-nominated leaders have more direct and indirect ties on average than non-leaders, which aligns with the SNA literature. However, when looking at individuals as leaders, many respondent-nominated leaders would not be identified using SNA because they are poorly connected. Also, many individuals who were not nominated would have been considered leaders because they are well connected. Further examining these results did not indicate why there is such a difference between the SNA-identified and respondent-nominated leaders. CONCLUSIONS: While these two methods identify some of the same individuals as leaders, there are many differences between the two methods. Using just one method may not be adequate for ensuring that suitable individuals are selected to lead these projects. We recommend multiple methods when selecting leaders.