HHMI FIU Program

The Collaborative for Institutionalizing Scientific Learning at FIU Project aims to transform the university’s educational practices across science and mathematics disciplines. The program leverages FIU's status as a majority-minority institution, which provides a unique opportunity to build a nationally recognized model of how to best support the learning and academic persistence of students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has awarded a $1.5 M grant to develop strategies that will improve STEM instruction and promote successful completion of STEM degrees.

To achieve its goal, the project focuses on four interacting objectives:

1. Expand the number of science and mathematics faculty utilizing evidence-based strategies
2. Integrate effective measures of classroom learning into all science and mathematics courses
3. Solidify a culture of evidence-based instructional strategies across the institution
4. Develop and deploy a research framework for analyzing institutional change in STEM education

HHMI Science Education Initiatives for Institutions 

HHMI National Research Project

In a collaboration with five HHMI science education programs, we conducted a large-scale survey study of STEM faculty in over 30 institutions with HHMI Science Education grants and 41 matched Research Universities without the HHMI Science Education funding. The purpose of the survey was to increase our understanding of STEM instructional practices and faculty support structures at institutions, and to identify promising practices and barriers to change.

HHMI collaborative workshops in 2016 and 2018 encompassed the creation of collaborative research teams to analyze the survey of faculty practices. These discussions aimed to reach a deeper understanding of change at HHMI-funded institutions, as well as to build strategic partnerships between programs. Workshop and session topics included:

• Factors that influence faculty change towards evidence-based practices
• Landscape instructional practices in STEM disciplines
• Institutional support structures to incentivizing faculty use of evidence-based strategies
• Formation of synergistic networks across HHMI institutions
• Models at HHMI institutions

HHMI's partners include Drexel University, Emory University, Florida International University, the University of Kentucky and the University of Maryland.