Scaling Our Undergraduate Real-world Convergence Education

About This Grant

This project aims to serve the national interest by developing new organizational approaches for scaling and sustaining convergence education practices that prepare undergraduates to address complex socio-technical challenges through interdisciplinary collaboration—moving toward enhancing higher education's value and relevance. Convergence is a paradigm that first emerged in universities to strengthen research and innovation by removing institutional barriers to cross-disciplinary collaboration. While convergence has resulted in integrated research facilities, funding, and partnerships, translating this paradigm to undergraduate education presents a promising opportunity to improve teaching and learning in STEM education and higher education more broadly. Convergence education provides students and instructors with experiences that promote shared practices across disciplines and the development of innovative solutions to real-world challenges. Unlike traditional problem-based or integrated STEM methods, convergence education takes an organizational approach to transdisciplinary teaching by (1) placing compelling, student-relevant problems at the center of the learning experience and (2) intentionally bringing together instructors and students from various academic units to blend their knowledge, theories, expertise, and methods. Rather than focusing solely on disciplinary content coverage, convergence emphasizes the design of authentic solutions to meaningful problems—creating an additional educational value that can transcend a student's major alone. By exploring how convergence can be implemented through institutional transformation efforts, this Level 2 Institutional and Community Transformation project aims to bridge disciplinary silos, expand participation in STEM, foster innovation by blending disciplinary perspectives, and equip more students with the skills and experiences considered valuable for workforce readiness and societal impact. The project's goals are to advance understanding of how convergence education can be sustained and scaled within—and beyond—research university environments and to generate actionable models for broader institutional adoption. Building on an exemplar innovation-focused convergence education program that features collaborative teaching across the engineering technology, liberal arts, and business disciplines, the project will conduct research to develop organizational guidance for convergence education implementation. This work will be parallel to the frameworks developed for convergence research. Using a Communities of Transformation theory of change and design-based research methodology, the project will investigate the institutional, cultural, and pedagogical conditions that enable or hinder convergence practices in undergraduate education. Key research activities include (1) in-depth case studies of convergence-related programs to identify institutional strategies in different settings, (2) ethnographic observations and stakeholder interviews to study the transformation of institutional culture through the implementation of the exemplar convergence program, (3) evaluations of undergraduate outcomes in integrative learning and innovation competencies, and (4) design-based research retreats for refining convergence education materials based on the collected data. The project will also develop and pilot a doctoral fellowship and convergence teaching program to prepare future scholars capable of teaching across disciplinary boundaries—helping to ensure the long-term sustainability of collaborative teaching efforts involving multiple academic disciplines. Finally, a national Convergence Education Conference will be convened to disseminate findings and build a collaborative community. Evaluation efforts will include both formative and summative components to support continuous improvement and transferability of the project's results. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.