Embedded Expertise + Intellectual Community + Visible Evidence =

Transformed Education

Welcome to the TRESTLE website! TRESTLE was a multi-institution, NSF-funded project to promote widespread improvement of undergraduate STEM education at research universities. TRESTLE was designed to support change at the department level, recognizing that the department is the primary unit for academic organization in the university context. TRESTLE catalyzed change by

• Partnering faculty with colleagues who have discipline-based pedagogical expertise (e.g., postdocs, faculty leaders) to transform courses 
• Building intellectual community around the work, and
• Making that work, and its impact on students, visible within the communities.

The TRESTLE institutions worked as a Networked Improvement Community (NIC); each campus undertook a similar intervention, with adaptations to their local context. The multi-institutional network supported the intervention by expanding TRESTLE participants’ access to expertise, knowledge, resources, social support and external legitimacy. It also enabled campus project leaders to share and compare experiences and results, and build on each other’s successes and failures to improve the intervention over time, while also yielding new insights into how universities can foster cultures that support better STEM teaching and learning.

TRansforming Education, Stimulating Teaching and Learning Excellence