About

Sloan Equity and Inclusion in STEM Introductory Courses

Foundational STEM courses introduce disciplines and act as gateways to majors. At large research universities, these courses are taught to hundreds or even thousands of students a term. They strongly influence career choice and present persistent challenges to diversifying STEM fields. They are often taught in industrial ways, with little recognition of or response to the diversity of students. As a result, outcomes disappoint everyone involved. Students – especially those who do not fit the model of those already successful in STEM – struggle to achieve their goals or receive the support they need. Faculty members know their students learn much less than they’d like and are rarely inspired. Campus leaders are attracted by the financial benefits of education at scale, but worry that these courses present outsize barriers to student progress. Everyone working to make STEM disciplines more equitable and inclusive is acutely aware that these remote, impersonal foundational courses present a persistent problem.

We address this problem with a sustained multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary STEM education research and development collaboration. This collaboration is motivated by a clear-eyed, openly stated focus on equity and inclusion in large foundational courses as the central goal of the reform process, harnessing a higher level of collective passion from the students, faculty, staff, and administrators who participate. We believe we can achieve more together than we can alone. We have helped to define a new standard for STEM reform projects: a class cannot be successful unless it is equitable and inclusive. SEISMIC began in 2019 with 10 large public research universities. The initial focus of SEISMIC was on parallel data analysis of student outcomes data in STEM courses, coordinated experiments to improve student experiences in the classroom, a continuous exchange of speakers, and extended annual meetings. We call this initial work from 2019-2025 SEISMIC Phase One. 

In July 2025, we received additional funding from the Sloan Foundation for SEISMIC Phase Two. The overall goal of SEISMIC Phase Two is to promote greater adoption of equity-oriented assessment practices in large introductory STEM courses across a range of institutions and departments. To achieve this goal, we will support STEM disciplinary teams in piloting revised assessments in STEM courses across the collaboration and evaluating their efficacy. In addition, we will restart our public Speaker Series program, host a monthly SEISMIC Seminar for active participants, officially launch our projects in Spring 2026 with a Kick Off Event, continue to seek funding for STEM reform projects, and aim to host a public STEM Structural Change Conference in Summer 2028. SEISMIC Phase Two is planned for 2025-2028.