Goals & OCCRL Efforts

OCCRL will work within a Regional Collaborative to increase the number and diversity of the pool of graduate students and qualified professionals who are pursuing a teaching career in STEM at community colleges. The office will help expand and strengthen the skills of future, early-career, and current STEM faculty to teach the diverse student population. OCCRL will also facilitate biweekly meetings among Regional Collaborative leaders and collaborate with UW-CERSE to adapt evaluation activities and embed them into OCCRL and Regional Collaboratives. Project activities will include:

• Integrating all the organizational lessons learned in the current INCLUDES grant into a Regional Collaborative backbone;
• assisting Regional Collaboratives in sustaining their local activities past the end of the grant to maintain long-term trajectories toward scaled reform;
• working with the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) to pilot the institutional self-assessment tool for supporting the hiring and success of diverse faculty in STEM education, with additional attention to career and technical education;
• and developing a sustainable income model to continue backbone work past the supplement year by extending existing Aspire Regional Collaborative activities.