Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) — Advancing what works in STEM education

STEM Leadership Development

About the Programs

PKAL Summer Leadership Institute (SLI)
Project Kaleidoscope has been offering leadership development workshops, institutes, and programs for faculty and campus leaders in STEM since 1996. Over 200 people have participated in PKAL’s hallmark leadership program.

The PKAL Summer Leadership Institute is designed for early and mid-career STEM faculty engaged in leading projects aimed at transforming undergraduate STEM education in their classrooms, departments and institutions. The five-day intensive Institute provides faculty participants with the theory and practice required to act as agents of change in their home institutions or professional societies. The Institute is held in the heart of the Rocky Mountains at the Baca Campus of Colorado College in Crestone, Colorado.

For more information on the Summer Leadership Institute, download our PDF brochure here.

2013 Institute Dates:

• Institute I: July 23 - 28, 2013
• Institute II: July 30 - August 4, 2013

Past SLI Events:

• 2012 Summer Leadership Institute
• 2011 Summer Leadership Institute

SLI Resources:

• SLI Alumni - Participants and Mentors from 1996 – present

The PKAL Leadership Initiative (LI)
From 2004-2007, Project Kaleidoscope collaborated with a select group of campuses around the country in an NSF-funded leadership development initiative. The intent was to nurture campus-based leadership teams tackling the interesting and challenging work of building and sustaining robust STEM learning environments for undergraduate students. This leadership initiative (LI) wove together issues relating to setting a vision that reflects institutional mission and circumstances, issues relating to the politics and processes of change, and issues relating to personal leadership—for faculty and administrators. Other threads woven through this tapestry of institutional change captured issues relating to the what, how, why and where of student learning.

Leaders on PKAL LI campuses worked through a process of articulating an institutional vision, shaping goals and strategies to realize that vision, and outlining specific activities through which those strategies will be implemented. A collective effort within the LI community was the sharing of approaches to overcoming systemic barriers to institutional transformation.