EXITO's Curriculum Development Conference in Review

EXITO creates an opportunity each year for our ten partner institutions to gather and work on issues related to curriculum development for undergraduates from underserved communities. The goal is to develop and enhance our curriculum to better support undergraduates’ successful pathways to research.  During this one-week conference, faculty and staff from each EXITO partner come together for curriculum development of EXITO courses and summer intensives, for faculty development on EXITO-related topics or student populations, and for shared administrative information about the EXITO project that affects curriculum and student support in the program. Convening for instruction, discussion, brainstorming, and problem solving is crucial for facilitating cross-institutional collaboration and preparing faculty to influence undergraduate research training at EXITO partner institutions. 

The most recent Curriculum Development Conference, held in June 2016, featured several accomplishments and highlights. EXITO faculty from nine of our partners participated in the National Research Mentoring Network Train-the-Trainer workshop to become certified to deliver the modular NRMN mentor training curriculum on their own campuses. Collaborative faculty planning moved us towards integrating consortium-wide learning objectives and content benchmarks into the EXITO Gateway course and summer Research Induction sessions. The conference also offered participants several workshops related to new and interesting curriculum topics including Indigenous frames for research, needs of students from foster care backgrounds, Deliberative Democracy pedagogy and other sessions led by our community college and 4-year partners. In addition, a majority of the visiting faculty joined in a video recording studio to capture their thoughts on what it means to be a researcher and what drives them to continue their research.

The EXITO Curriculum Development Conference supported curricular and institutional planning both within and across institutions and generated new resources to further our work in the coming year. Sharing instructional ideas and materials, identifying who among us provides expertise in specific teaching areas, and using new technological platforms to share instruction across partners are just some of the ways we are continuing this conversation throughout the year. Next year’s Curriculum Development Conference will incorporate what we have learned from another year of experimentation and implementation.