“We don't need a four-year college person to come here and tell us what to do”: Community college curriculum making after articulation reform
Abstract
This article presents an instrumental case study of how community college faculty engages in academic planning in the wake of curricular policy reform, and tensions between the perspectives of faculty from 2- and 4-year institutions. Implications of these dynamics are discussed with a focus on advice for those leading curricular change projects in community colleges.
For the last two decades, community college leaders have attempted to resolve the academic preparation needs of their students seeking upward transfer to 4-year baccalaureate programs (Bailey et al., 2015). As part of a broader completion agenda, public post-secondary systems have worked to develop articulation agreements that identify transferable courses across institutions that allow students to receive credit for the work they do in one context when transferring to another (Hodara et al., 2017; Senie, 2016). Despite the need among community college faculty (CCF) to engage in academic planning that fosters the development of transfer pathways, much of the research on transfer articulation has focused on the organizational process of implementation, from the perspective of specific stakeholders (e.g., Senie, 2016). Similarly, research on academic planning and curriculum making tends to focus on faculty at 4-year institutions (Bastedo, 2011; Lattuca & Stark, 2011; Rojas, 2007) and research on community college instructors’ participation in governance tends to focus on other aspects of work outside of curriculum development (Kater, 2017; Kater & Levin, 2004; Levin, 2018; Twombly & Townsend, 2008). Missing from the growing body of literature on community college's development of articulation policies is a consideration of how transfer policy implementation, which produces structural curricular requirements, informs instructor academic planning at the community college level. Using an instrumental case study of curriculum reform to support the development of transfer pathways within the City University of New York (CUNY) system, we develop a conceptual framework drawing upon Lattuca and Stark's (2011) academic planning model to understand how faculty design and revise curriculum in the educational environment of CUNY—a unified system consisting of 24 community and senior colleges and graduate schools—within the socio-cultural context of the completion agenda.
Based on our case study of the CUNY general education reform, in this article we identify the individual and organizational factors that informed community college instructors’ academic planning both during and after they participated in a curricular reform process. While faculty observed few changes in their day-to-day instructional practices, they did report a significant contrast between their beliefs about the goals and objectives of teaching within the community college and how their colleagues described their objectives in teaching in baccalaureate granting programs. As a consequence of this gap, community college instructors felt isolated from their colleagues at baccalaureate institutions and were less likely to engage colleagues across the CUNY system to address challenges with teaching and learning. Instead, they focused their energies within their individual institution and academic department.
Based on our case study, we offer implications for how to lead and organize a general education change process to support the needs of CCF and ensure successful implementation across a unified system, with the goals of educational improvement and cultivating a sense of belonging among faculty.
BACKGROUND
The CUNY system was founded in 1962 and initially consisted of four bachelor-degree granting and three associate-degree granting campuses located throughout the five New York City boroughs. Prior to consolidating to CUNY, these colleges were pre-existing, independent institutions with different organizational cultures, academic entry requirements, and curriculum and disciplinary needs and priorities. By 1967, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education identified credit transfer as an issue at CUNY and urged the system to allow all coursework taken at a CUNY 2-year college to count toward the credits required for a bachelor's degree at a CUNY 4-year institution. Over the next 30 years, CUNY founded more than 10 2- and 4-year colleges, in addition to passing several Board of Trustees resolutions designed to facilitate credit transfer, notably often at the objection of faculty governance.
As CUNY continued to expand, the criticism toward issues in transfer within the system also grew. Aside from credit transfer, the RAND corporation and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's advisory task force reported in 1999 that the relationship between the Board of Trustees and CUNY Administration was dysfunctional and the administration's lack of control over individual colleges led to the difficulty in establishing university-wide articulation agreements. At the heart of the deficiencies in intra-CUNY transfer was institutional resistance to system-wide academic planning. As a response, CUNY's 2000–2004 Master Plan referred to goals in developing a program planning system for transfer paths, establishing course equivalencies, and creating articulation agreements. However, by 2008, with a report from the New York State Commission on Higher Education to CUNY and the State University of New York, it appeared both systems still needed to strengthen course and program articulation and transfer—a timeline of the 2011–12 academic year was given to complete this work.
The problem of transfer at CUNY began at inception and continued as a pertinent issue within the system for nearly half a century. The historical transfer problem in CUNY gained notoriety when in October 2010, a Chronicle of Higher Education article portrayed the difficulties in attempting to transfer a single math course within CUNY institutions. With continued criticism by both governmental and accrediting agencies and now the media, CUNY Administration had to make improving student transfer a top priority. By October 22, 2010, the Office of Academic Affairs disseminated to faculty and staff the condition of credit transfer in a report titled, “Improving Student Transfer at CUNY.” The report found (1) several CUNY 2- and 4-year colleges often rejected transfer courses, (2) courses transferred in different ways (e.g., as electives, general education requirements, or electives within majors) depending on which departments were evaluating and course availability, (3) inconsistencies in course evaluations depending on student status (e.g., A.A. or A.S. degree holders received credit when others did not), (4) delays in credit evaluation, (5) outdated and/or informal articulation agreements, and (6) transfer students were likely to accumulate excess credits.
The report outlined recommendations to alleviate these issues, which included (1) general education requirements should be standardized in terms of number of total credits and course-specific credits and curricular areas, (2) identification of the five most popular transfer majors should occur, along with the creation of common courses in pathways to the major, and (3) accept earned academic courses for credit even when the transfer college does not have a course match. From this report's recommendations, CUNY's “Pathways” initiative was created, which established new general education requirements and transfer guidelines. While some CCF and staff were shocked with the findings of the report, particularly regarding the extra credits students were accumulating, it was the administration's recommendations that served as the major area of contention for faculty. Specifically, faculty became increasingly concerned regarding how these administrative-level curricular recommendations impacted faculty-level academic planning.
Faculty governance in the community college is a topic where much is written, yet little is known about how faculty's role in shared governance impacts their work (Twombly & Townsend, 2008). In Twombly and Townsend's (2008) literature review on CCF, they describe community colleges as largely bureaucratic organizations in which administrators tend to have more power than CCF, and leaders are viewed as autocratic versus democratic. Further, Twombly and Townsend (2008) noted that although administrators tend to involve faculty in governance, it is more so for the benefit of the administration rather than the faculty members themselves. Levin (2000) also suggests that CCF have limited power and their role in governance is advisory when actual decision-making happens at the governing board level. Considering the major role of CCF is teaching, the power to make decisions on curricular content, change, and evaluation—including general education reform—has been quite limited.
In terms of research on general education reform, the focus has been on 4-year institutions through an organizational lens (Arnold, 2004; Awbrey, 2005). Prior findings have shown that despite the structure of courses and sequences changing, the curriculum rarely changed and teaching and learning practices were rarely discussed. General education reform also requires cultural change, and collaborative interactions between and among departments to make change stick.
Twombly and Townsend (2008) called for more research on the relationships for curricular reform, faculty development, and the teaching and learning process for real change to occur that would support student success. The focus of our work on how faculty participation in a system-wide curriculum reform effort influences academic planning, particularly teaching and learning activities, across individual instructors, programs, and colleges helps to fill this gap.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
To examine the issues of faculty governance and articulation reform in the context of community college instructor's curriculum development, we employ Lattuca and Stark's (2011) academic planning framework. Lattuca and Stark (2011) argue that instructors’ academic planning occurs in the broad socio-cultural context of higher education where external and internal influences shape academic planning in an institutional educational environment. The socio-cultural context refers to the immediate physical and social setting, including cultural dimensions, of an individual's primary interactions. Socio-cultural contexts can change based on shifting roles and identities, which inform culture, as well as broader political, economic, and cultural trends. For example, in this study the institution (CUNY) in the organizational field (higher education) was dealing with external pressure from the state of New York and the federal government (in the wake of the 2006 Spellings Commission Report) to address transfer challenges within the CUNY system.
CUNY's internal mission and the mission of the community colleges that make up the 2-year system within CUNY was oriented around expanding access and improving post-graduate outcomes for students, including transfer. Factors in the political economy, like public policy enactments in the state of New York or in New York City that impact educational organizations create the foundation for the socio-cultural context that Lattuca and Stark (2011) describe. For example, when states like Tennessee introduce "free community college tuition" policies, CCF in Tennessee may shift their academic planning based on an expected influx of students. In the case presented here on CUNY, both accreditation policies created by the state of New York and changes to the budget in New York City potentially informed the academic planning of CUNY community college instructors. It is in the midst of this socio-cultural context that CUNY's CCF went about planning their courses (and revising their courses to fit the newly required standardized general education requirements and learning outcomes).
Instructors engage (both consciously and unconsciously) in an ongoing process of academic planning for class sessions, courses, and academic programs. Within the socio-cultural context of the department and institution, academic planning involves the development of content and sequence for instructional processes and assessments, which yield educational processes (the exchanges among learners, instructor, and content) and measurable educational outcomes (Lattuca & Stark, 2011). Thus, the broader organizational culture of the university system and the local, meso-level culture of the college and the department can impact the choices that instructors make.
STUDY METHODS
We used an instrumental case study to identify how curriculum reform plays out in the unique context of a public federated university system composed of both 4- and 2-year institutions. An instrumental case study allows researchers to highlight how a real-life issue enfolds in a bounded system over time by focusing on an information-rich situation (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2014). Our focal case involves implementation of a change to curricular policy regarding within-system transfer at CUNY. Our case covers the period of policy development, implementation, and reflection (circa 2010–2019) during which time instructors created and revised courses that reflect new general education requirements.
Data collection
We used a variety of artifacts as data for our study including 11 semi-structured interviews with CCF who had served on at least one administrative-led Pathways committee, and archived documents such as memos, meeting minutes, recordings of public meetings, position statements, proposed and enacted learning outcomes for general education, common course requirements across campuses, and white papers that provide curricular guidance.
We identified faculty by searching the list of CUNY Pathways committees for those from community colleges and contacted them via public web-based directories for interviews. In terms of faculty characteristics, all were tenured, four were men, at least one faculty member was represented among natural science, social science, and humanities divisions, four of six (at the time of policy implementation) community colleges were included, and participants represented the Pathways working and steering committees, transfer majors committees, and common core subcommittees. Documents were gathered beginning prior to the policy (to understand historical context surrounding credit transfer) through 5 years after the policy was implemented. We sourced artifacts available via public websites.
Data analysis
Both interview and document data were a priori coded via Dedoose using components of Lattuca and Stark's (2011) academic planning model. We also kept memos as we read and coded transcripts and documents to make note of any themes that emerged outside of the academic planning model.
FINDINGS
At the time the “Improving Student Transfer” report was distributed in 2010, CUNY consisted of 11 bachelor's granting institutions and six community colleges (in addition to several graduate schools) and served more than 270,000 students in credit-bearing programs and 200,000 students in continuing and professional programs (IPEDS, 2010). Almost immediately after disseminating the report, members of the University Faculty Senate criticized its data, arguments, and recommendations. Three weeks later, the Board of Trustees drafted a resolution on creating an efficient transfer system which charged the Chancellor to assemble a task force to (1) create a common general education framework across the entire system, (2) set credit requirements in general education disciplinary areas with a maximum of 36 lower-division general education credits, (3) ensure it adheres as closely as possible to existing general education requirements at CUNY 4-year colleges, and (4) that the criteria used to satisfy general education disciplinary areas were based on learning outcomes. In addition to the task force, the Chancellor was responsible for creating disciplinary committees to deliver at least three and no more than six courses to be accepted as entry-level major courses at any and all colleges offering those majors.
Both before and after the Board of Trustees’ unanimous vote in June 2011, the resolution was met with strong disagreement from faculty senates across many of CUNY's 2- and 4-year colleges, disciplinary councils, honor societies, faculty associations, faculty unions, and individual faculty members. Many senior college faculty were concerned that a general education curriculum would “dumb down” CUNY and lower academic quality and rigor, that the number of credit hours of general education were not high enough, that it would threaten the accreditation of many programs, and that it limits educational opportunities in the liberal arts and sciences.
These conversations, arguments, and even lawsuits continued for years, and overwhelmingly occurred because faculty felt they had been excluded from the shared governance process of making curriculum policy decisions. The Board of Trustees and Administration indicated faculty input as advisory, not as the final decision. Only a small portion of faculty members, and even less representing community colleges, served on the variety of Pathways committees.
The first phase of reform involved the creation of a task force and consisted of a 39-member working committee (25% CCF) and a 15-member steering committee (33% CCF) who were tasked to create a 30-credit common core structure built on the recommendations of various disciplinary areas largely based on intended student learning outcomes. The second phase was the establishment of three to six discipline-specific existing courses that merged into the largest transfer majors. To generate the courses, seven disciplinary committees were formed: biology (0% CCF), business (50% CCF), criminal justice (14% CCF), English (50% CCF), nursing (50% CCF), psychology (33% CCF), and teacher education (50% CCF). In deciding the courses to include, the committees also had to provide prerequisites, course descriptions, and learning outcomes. Finally, the CUNY chancellor also had to create a Common Core Course Review Committee which was responsible for reviewing and (dis)approving all proposed courses proposed for inclusion in the Common Core. There were eight subcommittees, one for each of the disciplinary areas represented in the Common Core.
Our findings suggest that as the community college instructors interviewed respond to the new curricular policy, they did not make immediate changes to their pedagogy. However, the organizational structures and relationships that emerged from the curriculum reform have an ongoing influence on how instructors think about teaching, learning, assessment, and curriculum. Our findings echo prior research on K–12 policy implementation regarding the influence of teachers’ sensemaking for curricular change, where a lack of change in values and beliefs about teaching results in uneven (or unlikely) instructional changes (Spillane et al., 2002). The lack of individual instructional change also echoes Coburn's (2004) observation that while messages in the institutional environment appear to inform instructor's changes to their academic planning, those messages are mediated and interpreted through existing beliefs about instruction. For example, most of the instructors we spoke with acknowledged that while the structure of the course might change (number of credit hours), the content of their course had been carefully planned to address students' academic preparedness when they arrived at CUNY.
Despite substantial concern over how a top-down mandate to re-think the curriculum might impact instructor's autonomy, the study participants generally acknowledged that much had not changed about their day-to-day teaching in the wake of general education reform. Rather the goal of the faculty during curriculum reform was to maintain continuity (and as a consequence stability) in their teaching work. The artifacts we examined bore this out as well, as the minutes show how faculty were assured in committee meetings and at Board of Trustees’ Town Halls that the goal of the initiative was not to change instructional strategies. The exception to the goal of stability was when individual departments capitalized on the controversy over the mandated curriculum change to drastically revise some aspect of the curriculum that they were otherwise unable to address. Instructors from multiple departments described how they made changes to longstanding required introductory courses (or course sequences) that were not focused on making the courses better align with Pathways requirements, but happened within the immediate context of the Pathways reforms. In both cases, departments capitalized on the opportunity to update curricula, instructional activities using technology, and the requirements of the course to better reflect contemporary challenges in their respective field. Business faculty, for example, reoriented their courses to cover emerging technologies and provide students a broader orientation to potential careers. Although departmental leaders had tried to push these reforms before, instructors resisted over concerns about time. With the perception that courses would need to be adapted regardless, space was finally opened for curricular updates.
Changes to the organization
[The reform] created a tremendous amount of turmoil in the department … as a result, our department has spent several years in terrible turmoil. It's never quite been the same since, I guess it can't. But the upshot of what happened with the curriculum, [and the policy implementation] didn't change anything.
The community college instructors we spoke with generally expressed a disconnect between the problems of learning and instruction that they believed were salient challenges in the community college space (e.g., students’ competing demands, academic preparation, the diversity of student experience) and the larger work of general education reform. They reported As a consequence, little changed about their teaching processes.
So, the first thing we have to say is that, “does this class- would this class articulate with a class at a four-year college?” Which means that if students- and that can be sometimes constraining because we can come up with a very creative new class but if there is no one offering that class at a four-year institution, then we can't be offering it. And that has happened a few times. We don't do too much of that because we don't have room in our program for one-off electives. We simply don't. We're tied to trying to fit things into moving students to the four-year college.
Not only do CCF need to ensure that any course they offer will transfer to a 4-year CUNY institution, but also that the course receives Pathways approval and is considered for general education credit.
In my little program, the Foundations class had been very hands-on, workshop-based, and while I value that, I felt like a foundations course should be a little more theoretical. I used the Pathways mandate to spearhead a redesign of the course to add more theory to it. That was actually a positive.
Although some instructors found that the changes they wanted to make were now easier to implement in courses that were already approved for Pathways articulation, few engaged in this kind of change unless they entered the process with existing ideas for course development. The process of general education reform, it seems, did not generate course innovations among the faculty we spoke with. Instead, it appeared to foster an environment where existing plans were easier to implement.
We put through a whole a Spanish heritage speakers track. Which we did not have before …. What was the point of offering upper-level courses to people who were starting from ground one? Now, there is some rationale to that because we're a two year college, you don't have a lot of time to developing skills. But, if you're good and you're interested, you can go beyond beginner. So what we were finding was that students who took, let's say Spanish one, Spanish two and we're really good at it, okay? Were then thrown into Spanish three with native speakers and they're like, “this is impossible.”
Prior to the general education reform, faculty were hesitant to create advanced courses for their students, or courses that spoke to the needs of specific groups of learners, out of concern that those courses would not transfer (or that students would perceive the courses would not transfer and would therefore avoid enrolling). The revised general education policy, which mandated transfer, allowed some faculty to expand and vary their offerings. Students who were native Spanish speakers, for example, could now take a heritage speakers course as that course would count for transfer credit.
My understanding is, from the beginning, is that fourth credit was meant to be more of an extra hour within which the professor and the students could have more one on one time together. You know, less instruction. To have the three credits for the instructional time, and the one hour for … and sometimes it wasn't just one on one, it could have been, you know, small groups, or more interactive.
Many faculty reported making fewer changes to their teaching, in part they believed, because the changes they wanted to make (e.g., active and hands on learning, peer interaction) required more time than they were now allotted with students. Instructors who had previously taught four credit courses were the most likely to make changes to their coursework, part because they were essentially required to do so. In the process, these faculty members often removed discussion and recitation sessions, active learning labs, and individual coaching. As a result, their instruction more closely resembled the courses that their senior college faculty peers described during committee meetings, but lacked the additional instructional time and resources that many of the faculty believed their students needed to make successful transitions. This clash between beliefs about teaching at the community college level and curricular policy built for general education transfer was a recurring theme in our interviews. The CCF interviewed for this study were frustrated by their inability to make the new curricular policy reflect their beliefs about teaching and learning.
Changes to faculty beliefs
I just think in terms of institutional culture, for good- for better and worse at the community college, and I think many two-year colleges, we tend to be very nurturing. There's a big personal dimension. People don't really know what college is, how to navigate it. I think you get to the four-year and it's often much more like sink or swim … students that contact me that have transferred, they use analogies like, “Community College is like home,” “We got kicked out of the nest,” stuff like that, so I think that's a big issue too.
I think when I am hiring I look so much more at, like, what is their level of empathy … do they have a teaching philosophy which is much more about supporting students instead of standing on the stage, and like, giving, you know, young students a lot of very complicated concepts.
I've sat on a lot of second interviews … the one common denominator that I see is, that the faculty member really has to love, you know, doing what they're doing, and being able to want to work with students who are really hungry for education and don't have the educational discipline- coming from a variety of countries and backgrounds and languages as we have here …. And having the patience to deal with that, you know, and the rapport. I think that's kind of a common denominator.
The process of participating in curricular policy reform committees highlighted for the CCF participants how different their core philosophies of teaching were when compared with senior college instructors. These CCF described their role as preparing students to learn in addition to helping them develop domain-specific knowledge. They suggested that senior college faculty expressed an expectation that students arrive ready to learn, with their primary objective being to further challenge their students and develop domain-specific expertise.
We have to teach four classes in one semester and five classes in one semester. That's a lot of teaching. With that kind of load, where are faculty going to spend time looking at the big picture? And saying, okay, what's the big issue right now that the college is facing? We all complained about the fact that students would take classes here and it wouldn't get to four-year colleges. I mean, that was, to me, a really, like, awful, like, to me that was horrible. Like, this is so unfair to students … the top down approach, while it's not, you know, it's not good for building consensus and it's not good for making- sometimes it can be demoralizing, but yet sometimes that's the only way in which you can make the whole system work
As horrible or as upset as people are by [the transfer articulation process], at least it was something about learning. Now a few years down the road, honestly there's so much emphasis on getting people out cheap and quick that a lot of us that really care about teaching and learning feel like … [its] almost like a marginalized activity … and, again, it's just getting out cheap and quick. That feels like the main game right now.
Much of the data driven reforms that CUNY institutions had implemented in the wake of Pathways reform felt disconnected from faculty's teaching and learning activities. Rather than focusing their energy on unified governance, faculty turned their attention to the local context of their college where they suggested they could have a more significant impact and experienced some sense of control.
Community college faculty in a unified system
I was on the committee charged with identifying at least three classes, three courses, that a student transferring from a two-year to a four-year, if they took it at the two-year it would be automatic that the transfer credit transferred, which is not how it's turned out at all, by the way but I don't know if that's what you want to know. My role was really just being a collaborative member of that community …. The form it took is, as I'm sure you saw, was just articulating course outcomes.
We were planning for the end of the semester and I said, “Well why don't we maybe invite a four-year person?” The colleague immediately snapped at me like, “We don't need a four-year college person to come here and tell us what to do.” I was thinking, “I'm not saying they should tell us what to do, I'm thinking there should be dialogue.” I'm telling you that because there's a lot of resentment and tension and conflict.
In comparison to cross-institutional collaboration, which was uncommon, within institution curriculum making initiatives happened with greater frequency after articulation implementation. Initiatives like “writing across the curriculum” or integrating important college preparedness skills into introductory courses were often the result of within institution relationships that developed during the transfer articulation implementation process. These relationships were valued for curriculum making, often in direct contrast to collaborations across the system.
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
Much has been written elsewhere about how the Pathways process was managed, and its consequences (see Kurzweil, 2015; Logue, 2017). Left out of most of those narratives are the voices and experiences of community college instructors. In this study, we center the voices of community college instructors to identify mechanisms and strategies for supporting their academic planning processes during and in the aftermath of a curricular policy reform.
There are three specific practices that we believe would facilitate curricular change processes that are sustainable, scalable, and promote a sense of belonging among CCF. First, leaders should clarify teaching and learning values among instructors before engaging in a curricular change process. Second, the focus of the process should be on building sustainable relationships that facilitate teaching and learning activities across organizations. Third, after the process is concluded, institutions should invest in the creation of communities of practice around sharing teaching and learning activities. We believe these strategies would cultivate academic planning activities that broaden instructor's perspective to include the socio-cultural context of the unified system, not simply their immediate department or college.
Instructors attributed their changing beliefs about their teaching roles to the conflict they experienced in the curriculum committees. Addressing and developing communal understandings of teaching and learning values within the unified system might have alleviated some of this conflict, and, perhaps, fostered collaboration in lieu of division over the purposes of curricular policy. It may be, for example, that all of the faculty engaged in the curricular reform process felt an ethic of care for their students, but that the language and experiences through which they expressed that care varied by organizational context. Beginning the reform process by establishing consensus on teaching and learning values would allow the process of curricular and organizational change to be guided by consensus. Instead, conflict over the purposes of teaching and learning activities frustrated the faculty in our study, and led them to question their role (and the activities associated with that role) within the university system.
On a similar note, the creation of the ad hoc committees resulted in few durable across system relationships, either among CCF or between community and senior college faculty. When system leadership prepares to engage faculty in a curricular change process, they might approach the development of committees as an activity in community building. Encouraging individuals to find commonalities, to share resources and ideas, before engaging in a change process might cultivate relationships that evolve into a community of practice around teaching and learning in specific subject/disciplinary areas or among instructors involved in a specific activity (first year experience courses, transfer preparation courses, internship programs). The communities of practice, supported by the institution, would be better positioned and equipped to manage curricular reform in the future, and could potentially be more responsive to the need for curricular change as it arises.
This study contributes to the growing literature on community college instructors’ participation in governance (Kezar & Eckel, 2004) and their academic planning practices (Lattuca & Stark, 2011). The process of curriculum making, admittedly focused on curricular policies than the kinds of curricular questions that might more directly inspire thinking about teaching and learning practices, resulted in changing relationships and a reorientation within departments and colleges. This reorientation entailed viewing curriculum making as a process focused on promoting and facilitating transfer.
New initiatives like enfolding new student orientation into introduction courses were developed to prepare students for within-system transfer to 4-year colleges. Relationships also developed within individual colleges, which helped instructors in different academic units have conversations across the curriculum. Our research suggests that despite spending substantial time working across the institution to “redesign” undergraduate education, very little changed in instructor's pedagogy, assessment practices, or curricular philosophy. It is, perhaps, unrealistic to expect that a curriculum reform process would cause a major shift in pedagogy without engaging faculty in meaningful teaching and learning activities. Leaders should be intentional about cultivating teaching and learning communities in unified systems to facilitate consensus about the purposes of the educational enterprise and to foster strong collaborative shared governance for curriculum development.
Biographies
Stephanie Sowl is a Ph.D. candidate and research assistant in the School of Education at Iowa State University. Her research interests include examining college trajectories of underrepresented students and the role of geography in reproducing educational inequality.
Michael Brown is an assistant professor in Higher Education and Student Affairs in the School of Education-College of Human Sciences at Iowa State University. His research focuses on the development of curriculum, instruction, and instructional technology for undergraduate science and engineering education.
