For a better experience, click the Compatibility Mode icon above to turn off Compatibility Mode, which is only for viewing older websites.

Mission

CASTLE staff in front of banners

Our Mission

The Center for the Advancement of STEM Teaching and Learning Excellence (CASTLE) believes that effective teaching is essential to both a) promote the success of a broad and representative population of students and b) improve the scientific literacy of students.  There is a national need for improving STEM education to expand the national STEM talent pool, stimulate global competitiveness, and promote use of critical thinking and data-driven decision making within society.  The mission of CASTLE is to affect institutional change in STEM education by promoting effective teaching.  We accomplish our mission through a robust program of fundamental and action research, educational program development and implementation, community building, and meaningful collaborations.

Our Core Values

  1. K-Faculty Focus: Our initiatives focus on promoting effective teaching across the educational spectrum. 

  2. Interdisciplinary: Our work is interdisciplinary by design, led by an interdisciplinary team, and respectful of discipline-specific differences. We believe there is strength in working across disciplines to promote effective teaching.

  3. Stakeholder Driven: Our work to promote effective teaching is driven by the needs of and the efforts of our stakeholders. This includes the community we are building with faculty, students, administrators, partners, the local community, and national and international networks.

  4. Culture and Community: Our initiatives emphasize use of pedagogical approaches known to support all populations of learners. Effective teaching strategies are intended to support students in: learning and exploring new ideas, feeling safe to express their views in a civil manner, and feeling respected as individuals.

  5. Research Informs Practice: Evidence-based pedagogies have been demonstrated to be effective through research. Our work promotes the use of evidence-based pedagogies and develops the evidence that particular pedagogical practices are effective.

  6. Addressing Issues of National Need and Global Importance: Our work contributes to the national landscape of STEM pedagogy and globally important issues relevant to promoting effective teaching in STEM.

Our Origins

CASTLE was founded in 2014 and is currently home to multiple projects supporting undergraduate and graduate education. CASTLE is housed at Drexel University, which has a long history of experiential learning and innovation in STEM education, embodied by both the Co-Op program and the E⁴ program, an NSF-funded, inquiry-based curriculum pioneered by the College of Engineering in the 1980s.

CASTLE has not only been successful in securing funding for STEM education initiatives, but is also part of large, national programs focused on improving STEM education, including the CIRTL (Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning) International Network which includes 44 universities such as: Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Michigan State, Northwestern, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UW Madison, and Yale.