Application Review Criteria

Applications to the PKAL STEM Leadership Institute are reviewed for evidence of leadership readiness, self-awareness, understanding of the complexity of undergraduate STEM reform, and openness to continued leadership development. Responses are not evaluated on writing style or polish. Rather, reviewers focus on the substance of the applicant's thinking, the perspectives reflected in their responses, and their ability to engage thoughtfully with the questions posed. 

Understanding the Landscape of Undergraduate STEM Reform. Reviewers consider the extent to which the application demonstrates:

• awareness of significant issues, conditions, or changes impacting undergraduate STEM education beyond the applicant's immediate department or institution.
• ability to make a meaningful connection between broader national challenges and how they are experienced, manifested, or understood within the applicant's own institutional context.
• understanding of the complex ways in which undergraduate STEM reform is influenced by multiple and often interacting factors, as opposed to a presentation of the challenge as a simple problem with an obvious solution.
• awareness of the structures, people, cultures, policies, resources, incentives, competing priorities, or other forces that can enable or constrain change.

Understanding Yourself as Leader. Reviewers consider the extent to which the application demonstrates:

• meaningful insight into the applicant's own leadership behaviors, tendencies, strengths, assumptions, or patterns.
• capacity for reflection beyond simply naming a strength or challenge 
• awareness  that leadership occurs in relationship with others and demonstrates some understanding of how the applicant's leadership may affect colleagues, teams, relationships, or organizational dynamics.
• curiosity about their own leadership and a willingness to examine areas that may be difficult, unresolved, or still evolving.

Your Leadership Challenge. Reviewers consider the extent to which the application demonstrates:

• identification of a challenge that requires influence, judgment, relationships, adaptation, change, or navigating uncertainty—not simply completion of a task or project.
• awareness of the competing interests, relationships, organizational dynamics, uncertainty, resistance, or other factors that make the challenge difficult to navigate.
• consideration of not only what other people or the institution need to change, but also the applicant's own role within the challenge.
• something meaningful about the applicant's own leadership capacity that the challenge is requiring them to examine, strengthen, or approach differently.
• evidence that the applicant has a real and sufficiently complex leadership context through which they can engage with and apply the Institute's leadership development experience.