All In: Understanding and Motivating Stakeholders to Create an Equitable Culture of Student Success

Discourse around Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education in the United States has long focused on improving the persistence and academic achievement of students. On the surface, such goals are reasonable and well-intentioned. However, the near-exclusive focus on those two outcomes as shorthand for “success” serves hegemonic norms which preclude the equitable success of all students. Although STEM education research has begun to address the inequitable systems within which students and faculty operate, the language of success has largely not changed. While previous work has aimed to recognize and characterize how normative definitions of success harm students and faculty, they fall short of providing readers with strategies for how to sustainably change these systems of injustice. Utilizing the four frames model for systemic change, this Essay 1) deconstructs the operational definitions of student success among key stakeholders involved in STEM higher education: students, faculty, departments, and institutions; 2) determines how extant policies and practices drive misalignments among these definitions and thwart equity; and 3) highlights three key opportunities for change agents to transform how success is measured and defined within STEM higher education.