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The system, not the students: Insights from the 2025 NASEM Report

Best Practices, News, Resources, Teaching, Tips, Workshops

I’ve spent years on various sides of the undergraduate STEM classroom—first as an underrepresented minority student navigating the hidden curricula of STEM language and culture, then as an instructor trying to close the equity gap in the general education chemistry course, and later as an educational developer helping colleagues teach more effectively. So, when the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released their 2025 consensus report, Transforming Undergraduate STEM Education: Supporting Equitable and Effective Teaching, I read it through all those lenses.

The NASEM report finding is deceptively simple: it’s the system.

Traditional undergraduate STEM teaching approaches are effective for only a small percentage of students, while many others, especially those from historically underserved communities, struggle to succeed in environments built on inherited teaching practices. This may lead many students to avoid enrolling in courses or pursuing careers in STEM. The report identifies this as a systemic failure rather than a failure of students or individual instructors.

Core problem: most STEM instructors never formally learn to teach

That distinction matters, especially at NIU, where STEM faculty are trained as disciplinary experts and hired for their research prowess rather than pedagogical expertise. Faculty cannot be expected to offer equitable and effective teaching if they have limited pedagogical training, little ongoing professional learning, and insufficient institutional support.

When I arrived at NIU in 2016 from a teaching-focused, small, liberal arts college, I faced an exciting challenge: transitioning from small classes of 20 students to managing sections of 200. The shift prompted me to engage with CITL to improve my teaching strategies. This experience not only enriched the educational experience for my students and me but also led to a new career in educational development.

The report is explicit that pedagogical preparation can’t be left to individual motivation. Institutional leaders set the tone, influence the culture, and can provide necessary support to make professional learning opportunities accessible—and rewarded.

Seven principles for equitable and effective teaching

The report outlines seven principles for equitable and effective STEM teaching. Among them, that students need active engagement with disciplinary material, students’ diverse interests and experiences can be leveraged to enhance learning, identity and belonging shape learning, and flexibility and responsiveness to student context are core teaching competencies. The report frames equitable and effective teaching as fundamentally student-centered: it makes course goals clear to students, recognizes students’ roles in their own learning, and gives students agency to engage with course materials in ways that respect their identities. These are evidence-based, effective teaching practices.

Ongoing professional learning, not just one-off training

Here is what I find most important for our context at NIU: The report insists that one-time faculty training is not enough. Even well-designed, one-time workshops cannot produce sustained changes in teaching practice. Instead, the report calls for ongoing professional learning opportunities that allow instructors to reflect on their teaching, receive feedback, and make iterative improvements over time. The report calls on institutions to make pedagogical learning continuous, accessible, and rewarded. If we ask faculty to invest in their teaching but only evaluate and promote them on research output, we are sending a message with our incentive structures that no workshop can undo.

This is where systemic change becomes essential. Departments, colleges, and institutions must create structures that support continuous learning. The conversation about STEM teaching cannot live only in the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning—it must reach every unit where introductory gateway courses are quietly weeding students out.

S-STEM grant professional development opportunity

As an educational developer, I see colleagues who are genuinely motivated to teach better but structurally unsupported in doing so. As a STEM instructor, I know the pressure to teach well while engaging two hundred students in an introductory course. The NASEM report validates both experiences and argues that institutions must change the conditions, not just the individuals.

NIU’s NSF S-STEM grant includes funding for professional development for instructors who teach our S-STEM scholars. This is direct investment in the kind of sustained, compensated pedagogical learning the report calls for. We invite NIU STEM instructors to complete our emailed survey on upper-division undergraduate teaching, with a focus on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and inclusive practices. Survey responses will shape the S-STEM inaugural faculty learning community, ongoing, compensated professional development dedicated to effective and equitable STEM teaching. This is how systemic change begins: with instructors, students, and educational developers building something better together.

Together forward

The NASEM Report doesn’t ask one person to do everything. It asks everyone to do something and to understand that their role in the system matters. For institutional leaders: building the structures and incentives that make good teaching sustainable. For department chairs: protecting space for teaching development. For instructors: staying curious about their teaching practice. Transformation is built slowly, in the small choices that accumulate into culture: the next faculty meeting, curriculum review, hire, or learning community where an instructor tries something new and it works. That’s how systems change. And at NIU, that work has already begun.

Learn more about the NASEM report

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