This paper provides a research-based framework for promoting institutional change in higher education. To date, most educational change efforts have focused on relatively narrow subsets of the university system (e.g., faculty teaching practices or administrative policies) and have been largely driven by implicit change logics; both of these features have limited the success of such efforts at achieving sustained, systemic change. Drawing from the literature on organizational and cultural change, our framework encourages change agents to coordinate their activities across three key levels of the university and to ground their activities in the various change perspectives that emerge from that literature. We use examples from a change project that we have been carrying out at a large research university to illustrate how our framework can be used as a basis for planning and implementing holistic change.

Cultivating institutional transformation has been of recent interest in education research. This theoretical paper presents six principles for supporting sustained change efforts at the department level. Considering change efforts at the level of "principles" is valuable because principles are grounded in theoretical and empirical knowledge, but are abstract enough to be adapted to many contexts. For each principle we argue for its value, drawing on previous literature in higher education, organizational change, discipline-based education research, and design thinking. We then give illustrative examples of how each principle was embodied within the Departmental Action Team (DAT) project. The DAT project facilitates the implementation of effective changes within university science, technology, engineering, and mathematics departments. We conclude with a discussion of how these principles can be applicable across a variety of institutional transformation efforts.

There is a pressing need to improve the sustainability of educational improvement efforts, but sustainability remains undertheorized in science education. In this article, we draw upon frameworks from organizational culture and sustainability to characterize change within a single undergraduate science department. This in-depth longitudinal case study over 15 years provides careful documentation of the types of changes that are required to make improvements over time. In particular, we argue that cultural shifts are an important aspect of sustainable improvements. As we show, even a department that was considered an educational improvement "success story" was unable to sustain the improvements made through its initial effort. Nonetheless, we do argue that the initial effort resulted in shifts to multiple aspects of the department's culture (e.g., ways of thinking, the status of education in the department), that we characterize with Bolman and Deal's four frames. These cultural shifts provided the groundwork for a later effort, to ultimately create sustainable structures in the department resulting in sustained improvement. To conclude, we provide recommendations for how to improve the sustainability of change efforts and describe important methodological considerations for future studies of sustainability.

The Access Network The Access Network consists of nine university-based sites from across the United States working to increase access, equity, and inclusion in the physical science community. While each site differs in their implementations, they share a commitment to five core principles: 1) fostering supportive learning communities, 2) engaging students in authentic science, 3) developing students' professional skills, 4) empowering students to take ownership of their education, and 5) increasing diversity and equity in the physical sciences. The Access Network enhances the efforts of the sites in the network by cultivating intersite communication, especially facilitating the documenting and sharing of ideas across sites through a variety of network-level activities. In this paper, we articulate our network's goals and activities, share evidence of some positive outcomes, and reflect on areas for future improvement.

The Compass Project is a self-formed group of graduate and undergraduate students in the physical sciences at UC Berkeley. Our goals are to improve undergraduate physics education, provide opportunities for professional development, and increase retention of students-especially those from populations typically underrepresented in the physical sciences. Compass fosters a diverse, collaborative student community by providing a wide range of services, including a summer program and fall/spring seminar courses. We describe Compass's cultural values, discuss how community members are introduced to and help shape those values, and demonstrate how a single set of values informs the structure of both our classroom and organization. We emphasize that all members of the Compass community participate in, and benefit from, our cultural values, regardless of status as student, teacher, or otherwise.

In conjunction with the Physics and Astronomy New Faculty Workshops (NFW), we are investigating mechanisms to further support faculty to improve their teaching. Previous work indicates that many faculty return from the NFW eager to integrate new ideas in their classrooms, but many struggle due to lack of ongoing support, and subsequently revert back to traditional instruction. We are investigating ways to provide such support by offering Faculty Online Learning Communities (FOLCs) to a subset of the NFW participants. The goal of the FOLC is to develop a community of self-reflective teachers who can support each other's long-term growth as educators. We base the design of the FOLC on a set of principles that emerge from several areas of literature, and we use these principles as a framework to understand the experience of the participants of the pilot FOLC.

Due to the “wicked problem” of the Academy’s resistance to innovation, new teaching and learning programs struggle to become integrated into the fabric of the Academy, which slows the uptake of evidence-based practices. This wicked problem is rooted in the lack of slow, intentional mechanisms for cultural change in the Academy. In this article, we analyze the institutionalization journey of the Departmental Action Team (DAT) project, which is a model for slow, intentional change. Over the last four years, partnering with two campus centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) allowed the DAT project to make institutionalization progress.This analysis is focused on the institutionalization activities of the DAT project team and their co-creation of value with diverse stakeholders across two institutions. Results of the analysis include the definition of seven areas of effort (Team Development, Program Design, Awareness Communication, Program Implementation, Program Assessment, Outcomes Communication, and Financial Stability) that are valuable for the institutionalization of innovative educational programs. Within each area of effort, we describe specific strategies for institutionalization progress. We also analyze the timing of different areas of effort and present a model describing the cycling between areas of effort over time. Throughout the analysis, we provide recommendations for CTL staff working to institutionalize innovations.

Understanding departmental culture is important for sustained change, so the Departmental Education and Leadership Transformation Assessment (DELTA) survey was developed to characterize departmental culture around undergraduate education. A five-step process was used to develop and validate the items in the DELTA survey. This survey can be used to quantitatively characterize a department’s culture.