STEM TRANSFER PARTNERSHIP SERIES - Expanding Organizational Change Teams: Insights from the STEM Transfer Partnership - Data Note 7 - February 2026

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Kyle

Expanding organizational change initiatives across higher-education institutions is both essential and difficult, especially when scaling beyond small pilot teams. This data note examines how 19 institutions in the STEM Transfer Partnership (STP) Community of Practice navigated early expansion of organizational change teams, using four surveys collected during STP 2.0. Findings analyze strengths, supports, and complications tied to increasing complexity, adding institutions and disciplines, and centering students’ voices in continuous improvement.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages7

Reading Time18 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Findings: What Supports and Complicates Team Expansion in STP 2.0

Build on Existing Relationships to Anchor Expansion

COMMUNITY COLLEGE RESEARCH INITIATIVES STEM TRANSFER PARTNERSHIP SERIES Expanding Organizational Change Teams: Insights from the STEM Transfer Partnership Susannah C. Davis and Lia Wetzstein DATA NOTE 7 | FEBRUARY 2026 INTRODUCTION Expanding organizational change initiatives in higher education, particularly across institutions, is widely recognized as both essential and challenging. Research on scaling change highlights that change efforts often struggle to move beyond small pilot teams and engage broader and more diverse groups of participants (Kezar, 2021). As initiatives grow, they must contend with increasing complexity, including differing institutional cultures, uneven capacity, competing incentives, and the difficulty of maintaining shared purpose while adding new people and organizational units (Kezar, 2021) . This data note examines how 19 institutions participating in the STEM Transfer Partnerships (STP) Community of Practice (CoP) navigated the early stages of expanding their organizational change initiatives and teams. In cross-institutional transfer partnerships like those in the STP CoP, the challenges of increased complexity are especially pronounced as teams work simultaneously to strengthen relationships, integrate new disciplines and institutions, and alter longstanding organizational practices that shape students’ transfer experiences. The STP initiative is a multi-year, research-informed effort to improve STEM transfer and degree completion for students from low-income backgrounds in Washington State. Facilitated by Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) at the University of Washington, STP brings together nine cross-institutional teams composed of faculty, staff, administrators, and undergraduate students from 19 two- and four-year colleges and universities. Through participation in ongoing CoP events and activities, teams identify institutional barriers to STEM transfer and develop equitycentered improvement strategies informed by student voice. STP provides structured coaching, annual convenings, and shared tools to support locally defined, systems-level change (see STP Data Notes 1–6 for additional information) . CCRI also builds in regular opportunities for reflection and process improvement by surveying CoP members throughout each year. These surveys inform adjustments to the CoP’s structure, facilitation, and resources, and also position improvement as a shared responsibility among CCRI coaches and institutional teams. In fall 2024, STP entered a new phase of work referred to as STP 2.0, which placed a deliberate emphasis on expanding teams by adding new institutions, disciplines, and/or departments. All participating institutions were also required to recruit and hire at least one undergraduate transfer student team member, and student members also participated in a dedicated student CoP. This shift reflected STP’s growing commitment to positioning transfer students not only as sources of feedback, but as active contributors to the design, implementation, and refinement of institutional change efforts. Collectively, these expansions were designed to strengthen teams’ capacity to address systemic barriers to postsecondary transfer by incorporating a wider range of institutional perspectives and more directly centering students’ voices and experiences in change efforts. In [uw. edu/cc ri](uw. edu/cc ri) 1 STEM TRANSFER PARTNERSHIP SERIES | Expanding Organizational Change Teams: Insights from the STEM Transfer Partnership addition, these expansions aimed to create cultural change within and across institutions to support continuous improvement in transfer students’ experiences and outcomes, which requires broader engagement and buy-into enhance sustainability (Kezar et al., 2025; Yeh & Wetzstein, 2022) . This data note draws on data from four surveys collected during the early stages of STP 2.0 (see Table 1) to examine how teams within the approximately 160-member

FAQs

What is the purpose of STP 2.0 mentioned in the data note?

STP 2.0 is a new phase that deliberately emphasizes expanding teams by adding new institutions, disciplines, and/or departments, while requiring undergraduate transfer student participation on teams.

How many institutions and surveys are analyzed in this data note?

Nineteen institutions participating in STP Community of Practice are examined, using four surveys collected during the early stages of STP 2.0.

What makes team expansion in STP 2.0 easier, according to the findings?

Expansion is described as working most smoothly when it builds on existing, trusted inter-institutional relationships that support onboarding, expectations, early engagement, and momentum.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Kyle