ILLUMINATING INVISIBLE LABOR AND ORGANIZATIONAL HYGIENE IN COMMUNITY COLLEGE-UNIVERSITY TRANSFER PARTNERSHIPS
The symposium featuring PROSPECT-related talks and activities related to illuminating invisible labor went really well. We really appreciated Dr. April Ström, one of our advisory board members, serving as a moderator for the symposium and posing reflective questions. We shared information about the nature of invisible labor (Michelle), the stages of invisible labor across a partnership (from before the partnership through sustaining the partnership) (Chris), and the extra invisible labor entailed in ensuring one’s own institution is partnership ready (Mindi).
A key implication of the presence of invisible labor is the need to make it both visible and valued. The broader invisible labor team crafted a set of reflective questions for institutions which we invite you to engage with. The questions are divided into three sections, or transfer-receiving institutions, transfer-sending institutions, and all institutions partnering to support transfer students. In considering the set of reflective questions, your team may want to discuss:
- Which of these areas does your institution already attend to?
- Which of these questions are easier or more difficult to answer?
- Which ones might be urgent priorities?
- Who all should be involved in these conversations?
- How often should various discussions be revisited?
Here are a few photos from this symposium:
Michelle introducing the concept of invisible labor
Chris describing the stages of invisible labor
Mindi describing what organizational hygiene looks like in practice
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EMERGING QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS TO ELEVATE COMMUNITY COLLEGE NARRATIVES
The Alternative Methodologies group led a workshop at the Council for the Study of Community Colleges in Salt Lake City in April 2026, where we shared several methodologies the group has been investigating that challenge traditional research methods. Conventional methodologies are often a product of academic power dynamics and have historically marginalized certain voices. The shared goal of these methodologies is to hear from and lift up underrepresented voices in education research. The methodologies presented were the Partnership Profile Template, the Transfer Grid, Collective Vignettes in Reflexive Analysis, and Poetic Transcription.
After the group presented briefly, we spread ourselves across the room and invited participants on a "gallery tour," where they could pick up printed artifacts, interact with them, and ask questions. We received great feedback and a high level of interest from participants.
We had invited Dr. Vilma Mesa, who is a member of our advisory board, to be the moderator for this symposium. In her discussion, Dr. Mesa shared how she had initially been viewing the set of work in this symposium through a more traditional methodological lens. She shared that she had to shift her mindset to think about the purposes of alternative methodologies as highlighting participant voices, particularly those often silenced by traditional reductionist research methodologies. We appreciated this perspective: it does take re-learning research methodologies for those of us trained in traditional methods to shift to using and appreciating alternative methodologies. We also appreciated the attention Dr. Mesa paid to the connections between the research questions posed and methodologies enacted.
As a first-time conference attendee and presenter, I (Camilla) found the experience exciting and welcoming, so it made things much easier than expected. I was able to gather valuable feedback to bring back to my research team as we continue to advance that study.
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DEVELOPMENT OF A STEM SELF-EFFICACY SCALE FOR STEM TRANSFER STUDENTS
According to Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent et al., 2013), self-efficacy is an important antecedent to career interest, satisfaction, and persistence. Thus, it is important to measure self-efficacy in students aspiring to a STEM career. However, Bandura (1977) conceived of self-efficacy as context-dependent. In other words, an individual has varying levels of self-efficacy for different endeavors and situations. Thus, it is important to develop a specific measure for self-efficacy in STEM, which is what we set out to do. Our presentation detailed our activities in following DeVellis’ (2012) seven-step scale development process up to and including Step 6, collecting data with our proposed scale and analyzing it. We hope to complete Step 7, refining the scale, by the end of May 2026.
My (Jake Marszaleck) own reflection on the conference concerns a question from the audience at our presentation about why we wanted to have a single total score for STEM self-efficacy. My response was for convenience, as it would be easier to talk about a single STEM self-efficacy score rather than eight subscale scores. However, I wish I had the presence of mind to refer to the facet of validity labeled :usability,” which is recognized by the Standards for Testing and Measurement (AERA, APA, & NCME, 2014). Simply, usability refers to practicality: is the test easy for both the researcher to administer and the participant to complete? Having the option to use a single total scale score would increase the usability of our scale by allowing administrators to increase ease of interpretation, communication, analysis, and benchmarking.
See the full reference list.