December 1, 2017

On Friday, November 3^rd the CASTLE Leadership team consisting of Adam Fontecchio, Jason Silverman, and Jennifer Stanford, as well as affiliated faculty member Kevin Smith presented a facilitated discussion session entitled “STEM Curricula for Authentic Learning Experiences (SCALE)” at the AAC&U Transforming STEM Higher Education Conference in San Francisco, CA.  This session provided participants with an overview of classroom-based approaches to expand access to research and other authentic learning experiences.  Session participants were provided with opportunities to discuss what is happening on their campuses, barriers to implementation and assessment approaches that are appropriate for evaluating these opportunities. 

The faculty members went through a competitive application process to present at the conference where they were able to disseminate some of the work CASTLE has done at Drexel with support from The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the DARE program and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  The session was well attended with 49 participants.  An important emerging theme during the session was the need for new mechanisms to assess authentic learning experiences.