Some conditions and strategies are more conducive than others to organizational learning and institutional change. As the Pullias Center works with the community to improve admissions, recruitment and mentoring, we are equally active in research and evaluation to assess the efficacy of approaches and thereby refine them. Among the papers accepted and published in association with Dr. Julie Posselt's sponsored projects this year, four of them advance the state of knowledge about institutional and cultural change in decentralized environments.
Critical to our “research to practice and back again” cycle is dialogue with relevant audiences. This month, for example, Dr. Posselt was joined with colleagues from the Equity in Graduate Education Consortium for an endowed lecture and panel discussion at the annual meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools, in St. Louis, Missouri. The annual LaPidus lecture is named for the first president of the Council of Graduate Schools and is to be given annually by “an international leader and visionary thinker.” In the lecture, which was titled, “Systemic Change in Graduate Education: Structure and Effective Strategies for Leadership,” Posselt shared the framework for systemic change presented in her book Equity in Science: Representation, Culture, and the Dynamics of Change in Graduate Education as well as findings from recent research on systemic change efforts that have been carried out by Consortium partners and Pullias affiliates. The session was moderated by USC Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Andrew Stott, and panelists included Consortium campus liaisons Vice Provost for Graduate Education Alyssa Crittenden (UNLV) and Senior Associate Dean Denzil Streete (MIT), as well as Dean John Lopes (Clemson).
Among the findings Posselt presented were those in “Reconstructing PhD Admissions through Organizational Learning” which was recently accepted by the Journal of Higher Education. It presents quantitative evidence from an external evaluation of the Consortium’s outcomes during its pilot period, led by Dr. Kelly Rosinger, Professor of Higher Education at Pennsylvania State University. She collected administrative and survey data from our partners and used fixed effects panel modeling to measure outcomes at three levels. She found a significant uptick in the use of inclusive admissions and recruitment practices among affiliated programs. More importantly, affiliate programs also increased the compositional diversity of applicants, admittees, and those who choose to enroll. And in a signal that this was more than mere experimentation, affiliated programs stuck with their new practices for at least three years and intend to continue using them going forward.
She also presented findings from a companion study investigating the “how” behind these outcomes using qualitative methods and theories about how organizational routines may disrupt institutionalized inequalities. Drawing from data representing 17 PhD programs in the Consortium, it was recently published in Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis. We found that policy implementation for holistic admissions consisted of leading a data-driven discussion about taken-for granted policy, cultural, and cognitive routines, on the one hand, while protecting the possibility of new routines by carefully managing the dialogue around change. By collectively rethinking application requirements, developing more rigorous review processes (often adopting evaluation rubrics, and contextualizing data in applications), STEM faculty moved from dialogue to experimentation to institutionalization of more inclusive admissions procedures.
Meanwhile, from our sister project, the Inclusive Graduate Education Network, two forthcoming papers in the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education – one a research manuscript and another a policy brief – share results of our collaborations with disciplinary societies. “Can Professional Societies Contribute to Systemic Change? Sensegiving, Sensemaking, and Departmental Transformation,” led by Dr. Steve Desir, presents research about how department and admissions chairs across the US interpreted and acted upon the American Astronomical Society’s recommendations from a report of the Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion in Graduate Education. We found the report helped astronomy and physics departments set priorities and legitimate equitable practices, but that departmental structures limited its impact. We discuss the potential and limits of sensegiving and sensemaking in institutional change, and how leaders can integrate dialogue and guidance into systemic change strategies.
Finally, Posselt led a collaboration of nine IGEN entities in writing, “Getting Started with Culture Change in STEM: Lessons in Retooling.” This accessible policy brief presents actionable strategies for leaders, organizations, or projects that seek to change culture in STEM, anchored in Swidler’s (1984) classic notion of culture as a “tool kit of symbols, stories, rituals, and world views which people may use in varying configurations to solve different problems” (p. 273). The authors recognized a common challenge for culture change in STEM is the concept of culture itself; unlike many scientific concepts, culture lacks a common definition and is not among the knowledge expected of most STEM professionals. With an intuitive, theoretically-robust understanding of culture, and practical examples of cultural change in practice, leaders may begin leveraging culture more adeptly to create healthier scientific communities.
If you are interested in any of these papers and are unable to access them, please contact us as equity@usc.edu.
