Investigators: Joel C. Corbo, Noah Finkelstein, Mark Gammon, Gina Quan, Sarah Wise; Collaborators: Karen Falkenberg, Courtney Ngai, Mary Pilgrim (Colorado State University); Daniel Reinholz (SDSU); Andrea Beach and Jaclyn Rivard (Western Michigan University)
A DAT is a departmentally-based working group of about 4 to 8 faculty, staff, and/or students that work on a cross-cutting educational issue over one or two years, with the support of outside facilitators and the sanction of the department chair. DAT participants choose their focus by developing a vision for undergraduate education in their department; example foci include curricular/instructional revision and alignment, improving equity and diversity, and enhancing community among faculty, students, and staff. DATs both implement change and focus on creating lasting structures (e.g., committees, positions, policies) that can continue their work over time (rather than viewing change as a one-time “fix”). DATs maintain transparency by sharing information with and making recommendations for change to the chair, appropriate departmental committees, and the department as a whole. Pilot DATs at CU Boulder initiated a variety of structural changes within their departments, including the allocation of several instructor course equivalents to serve as curriculum coordinators; the formation of a standing committee focused on student diversity, retention, and recruitment; and the restructuring of a course sequence to better support majors transitioning to upper division.
The current DAT project focuses on facilitating and studying new DATs at CU and at CSU to to develop: (1) a process for enculturating DAT facilitators and institutionalizing DATs in campus Teaching and Learning Centers (TLCs), (2) theory of how DATs operate in different contexts, and (3) cultural and structural change metrics.