ABSTRACT
Institutions across the higher education landscape are different and each navigates change in its own way. Achieving a cohesive, four-year undergraduate curriculum that welcomes all students into a culture of inquiry and discovery is challenging work across multiple, interconnected institutional dimensions. The 12 institutions and 24 departments participating in the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) Transformations project came to this work cognizant of the challenges and, most importantly, with an equity-minded frame. What are the most significant factors for an institution and/or department to engage in such a successful change initiative? This chapter describes how institutions influence the success and timeline of curricular and cultural transformations. In considering the role of institutional agency, six institution-level factors were identified in this study that can either support or hinder the change process: institutional mission and identity; institutional culture; institutional dispositions; realizing synergies; resource engines; and change leadership. The institutions that were most successful in their transformations developed an understanding of—and fully leveraged—these elements to accelerate and achieve equitable change as well as to ensure long-term sustainability of their transformed curricula and cultures.
