The Importance of Community in Fostering Change: A Qualitative Case Study of the Rigorous Research in Engineering Education (RREE) Program

Reform of engineering education continues to be a national priority. However, despite strong external support and funding, change has been slow. Recent research suggests that for institutional change to succeed, change agents within an institution need to form and maintain communities of like-minded individuals. This emphasis on community formation highlights the importance of Communities of Practice (CoP) as a vehicle for change. This article describes one CoP that emerged as an outcome of the Rigorous Research in Engineering Education (RREE) program that was funded by the National Science Foundation. The structure of the RREE might be used as a model for other programs intending to enact institutional change. These types of programs may play a crucial role in activating change and may be particularly useful in settings where there is no or little local support for change. Oftentimes, change initiatives tend to focus on the intervention of individual change agents while not attending to the benefits offered by a community-building approach. Successful change strategies are often built by teams of researchers who are capable of working together across institutional structures to extend the reach of their work. Consequently, this paper documents how intentional community-building activities can be used to initiate change.