Establishing a Faculty Development Focus At a Public Technological Research University

At STEM-dominated research institutions, where faculty incentives are heavily weighted toward research for promotion and tenure, faculty development centers must be creative and persistent in finding ways to promote improved teaching and learning environments in order to affect campus culture.While research continues to be vital to the mission of higher education institutions, new factors are compounding the need for more emphasis on effective undergraduate STEM teaching and learning, such as the increased call for new instructional strategies for science and engineering undergraduate education to prepare tomorrow's workforce for a highly technological world; evidence of students entering college less prepared in math and sciences; and demands by stakeholders to increase access, assessment, retention and persistence of students in state-funded institutions.This paper explores the history of a faculty development center at Missouri University of Science and Technology, which faces all of the challenges mentioned above, and the strategies it is using to help shift a campus culture toward improved teaching and learning.