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"Organizational culture is an emergent result of continuing negotiations about values, meanings and properties between the members of that organization and with its environment. In other words, culture is the result of all the daily conversations and negotiations between the members of an organization. …If you want to change a culture you have to change all these conversations-or at least the majority of them." [Richard Seel]

The core of education is conversation. Whether face-to-face in classrooms across the country, via electronic channels opened by telecommunication technologies, or via the written word in papers and books, communication between individuals is where learning truly takes place. Similarly, improvements in the education process occur through conversations about what changes might and should be brought about and how these changes might happen. Recognizing that these conversations hold the key to systemic improvement in engineering education, faculty members across the Foundation Coalition (FC) are engaging faculty members in other schools in conversations, dialogues, discussions, and meetings regarding innovations and improvements in engineering education. Mechanisms through which these exchanges occur are manifold, but most can be placed into one of four categories.

• Developing and field testing assessment instruments Ascertaining what students know, what skills they have gained, and what they think about their competence and the instruction they have received have been long-time catalysts in promoting improvements in teaching. Therefore, the FC is constructing a variety of instructional assessment instruments and inviting faculty members at institutions throughout the country to work with these instruments, providing data and feedback through which the instruments can be enhanced. Conversations stimulated by these instruments are raising interest in FC activities and results.
• Developing resources to encourage adoption of alternative pedagogies and curricula These resources include one-page handouts (introductions), targeted summaries, more detailed documents on educational pedagogies, EC 2000 modules, the FC Web site, and workshops. All these resources are designed to help faculty members become more informed about alternative pedagogies and curricula.
• Continuing partnerships The FC is working with the other engineering education coalitions in offering an annual Share the Future Conference as well as regional workshops. FC partners are also hosting small, focused conferences to explore specific issues in greater depth. These partnerships are intended to help change conversations across the engineering education community.
• Curricular change The FC has undertaken a qualitative research project that examines the processes through which coalition partners have initiated and attempted to sustain curricular change. Documenting curricular change processes on a given campus is intriguing to the rest of the engineering education community. The goal is to provide knowledge about curricular change processes that will aid other institutions undertaking significant curricular change.