Scaling Up and Sustaining Successful Approaches

Leader: Susan G. Forman, Vice President for Undergraduate Education, Rutgers University

Recorder: Blythe Grossberg, Department of Psychology, Rutgers University

Numerous innovative projects and programs focused on improving the undergraduate experience are developed each year at research universities. However, even when these projects and programs appear to be successful and to improve student learning, issues of scalability and sustainability remain problematic. Scaling up and sustaining undergraduate research programs can be viewed as a specific case of the problem of innovation implementation within an organization. The development or even the official institutional adoption of an innovative program does not necessarily ensure successful implementation of the program, defined as appropriate and committed use of an innovation in an organization.

The session began with a review of the literature on effective innovation implementation, followed by discussion of the ways in which structural and social factors that are likely to determine long-term program success can be addressed as part of program planning. Participants also discussed the following questions:

• At your university, what specific actions have been taken during undergraduate research program planning to attempt to address issues of scalability and sustainability?
• Which of these actions have been successful? Which have been unsuccessful?

Main Points

Projects focused on improving the undergraduate experience at research universities are developed each year, but issues of sustainability and scalability remain problems. Such problems can be addressed in program planning.

An innovation in the context of a university is a new set of tasks carried out at the micro-level by a set of individuals and groups. Thus, programs to increase undergraduate research can be viewed as innovations. Innovation is enhanced, stimulated, and facilitated by macro-level conditions. Innovation implementation is the process that occurs between the decision to adopt an innovation and the routine use of that innovation in the organization. Klein and Sorra (1996) have developed a model of implementation effectiveness that understands effectiveness as a function of two factors: the organization's climate for the implementation of the innovation and the organizational members' perception of the fit of the innovation to their values.

Writers in the area of organizational readiness for change have identified five factors that suggest an organization is ready to adopt and implement an innovation. They are as follows:

• Support and demands from external environment for the innovation;
• Awareness and acceptance that there is a problem to be solved;
• Organizational members see an advantage from the innovation;
• Resources to support the innovation are present (staff, money, time, skills);
• Established structures and rules are in place to facilitate the innovation.

Two examples of programs that have been successful as a result of those factors include an undergraduate research center at the University of Georgia and a freshman seminar program at the University of Texas.

At the University of Georgia:

• There was a public demand for the university to address the problem of undergraduate research.
• During the accreditation process, members of the organization became aware that their undergraduate education could be improved.
• Faculty at the university saw an advantage to using undergraduates on research teams and saw them as more curious and engaged than many graduate students.
• The program had resources and was a line item in the budget. Grants also pay for the undergraduates.
• The center is linked to the rest of the university. The provost took all the decentralized programs and put them under the center's umbrella.

At the University of Texas at Austin:

• There was external support from the national press after the release of the Boyer Report. Legislators, parents, and students were also demanding more for their tuition dollars.
• There was institutional awareness that undergraduate students were getting lost at the university.
• Faculty selected for the program were excited about the idea of undergraduate research.
• The program attempted to minimize the use of faculty time and looked for external funding through foundations.
• The program was linked to external structures at the university. Course numbers were developed for the research, for example.

University administrators and others who develop and implement innovations in higher education settings must see themselves as managers of the change process rather than developers of new programs. John Kotter (1996) in his book Leading Change has identified eight factors why change efforts fail. His work is based on initiatives in business organizations, but the following social and structural factors are also important in planning and implementing change at universities:

• There is too much complacency;
• There is not a powerful guiding group;
• A sensible vision is not developed;
• The vision is undercommunicated;
• Organizational members are blocked by large obstacles;
• There are no short-term victories;
• Victory is declared too soon;
• Changes are not embedded in the organizational culture. Pervasive change is infused in the daily lives of organizational members and touches many parts of the institution (Drucker, 1994).

Supportive leadership is essential to successfully implementing change. Nine leadership strategies, identified in a recent project by the American Council on Education (1999), are linked with successful change:

• The leader makes a compelling case for the innovation;
• The leader focuses on improvement, not blame;
• The leader develops connections among projects and individuals;
• Senior administrators support the project and are involved in the implementation;
• The leader empowers individuals across the university at a variety of levels;
• The leader creates supporting structures, incentives, and resources;
• Change leaders work within a culture to change the culture;
• The plan for change is a plan for the long term.

According to the session participants, undergraduate research programs at their universities face a number of issues related to scale and sustainability. Several important considerations are related to the students: how many to involve, how research should be defined and conducted across disciplines, how to address and assess students' capacity to conduct research and scholarly projects; and how to ignite their interest. Universities also need to create reward structures for faculty and include supervision of undergraduate research into the promotion and tenure systems. They face larger questions as well, such as how research can be conducted and should be defined in the humanities and across disciplines, and how to communicate to donors and the public about what research is. All of these questions must be taken into account when considering how to scale up programs and expand them beyond their initial cohorts.

Recommendations for Action by the Reinvention Center

Participants suggested that the Center could facilitate efforts at change in a number of ways, primarily by providing information and/or consulting services and by providing opportunities for institutions to share information with one another through meetings, publications, and the Internet. The Center might also lobby groups such as university presidents and state governments for support for undergraduate research programs.

Areas in which institutions would like more information include:

• Data from other campuses on staff, budget, and other operational issues
  
• Funding sources
• Models or guidelines on topics such as:
  Promotion and tenure systems
  Incorporating research into undergraduate courses
  Incorporating undergraduate research into institutions' strategic plans

Other topics the Center might assist with include:

• Defining research across disciplines
• Helping social science programs deal with Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to conduct undergraduate research
• Addressing readiness issues for students

Specific recommendations include:

• Continuing regional meetings.
• Facilitating networking by region and administrative area.
• Facilitating data sharing about staff, budget, and other issues.
• Establishing a Web database with case studies and best practices.
  
• Putting the conference proceedings on the Web, including possible funding sources and reciprocal programs.
• Publicizing the listserv so members can use it to solve problems at their universities.
• Setting up consulting services for individual university programs.
• Developing models and best practice guidelines for incorporating research into undergraduate courses.
• Producing guidelines for promotion and tenure systems to encourage faculty to support undergraduate research.
• Producing models of strategic plans incorporating undergraduate research programs.
• Defining research across disciplines.
• Helping social science programs deal with Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to conduct undergraduate research.
• Helping universities address readiness issues for students.
• Lobbying university presidents for undergraduate research programs.
• Carrying out lobbying efforts with state governments.

Resources

Web sites:
University of Georgia
Undergraduate Research Center: http://www.uga.edu/honors/curo/

University of Texas at Austin
Freshman Seminar Program: http://www.utexas.edu/student/connexus/freshsem/index.html

Publications:
Drucker, P.F. 1994. The Theory of the Business. Harvard Business Review, September/October, 95-104.

Eckel, P. Hill, B., Green, M. & Mallon, B. On Change. Reports from the Road: Insights on Institutional Change. American Council on Education.Washington, DC, 1999.

Klein, K.J., & Sorra, J.S. (1996). The challenge of innovation implementation. Academy of Management Review, 21, 1055-1080.

Kotter, John P. (1996). Leading Change. Harvard Business School Press.