From Community of Practice to Community of Transformation: Strategies for Leadership and Sustainability

Professional communities can provide educators with resources, encouragement, collaboration, and a place to explore new approaches. Sustaining those communities over time, however, requires more than bringing people together for a workshop, conference, or funded project. Presented at BCCE 2026, From Community of Practice to Community of Transformation: Strategies for Leadership and Sustainability explores how communities can be intentionally designed to support continued engagement, implementation, leadership development, and organizational resilience. The presentation introduces a pathway from participant to practitioner to leader and considers how members can move from initial exploration and belonging to classroom implementation, contribution, facilitation, and leadership. Using examples from BioQUEST’s community ecosystem, the presentation highlights the importance of: creating accessible entry points for participation supporting educators as they adapt and implement new ideas providing meaningful opportunities to contribute and share work developing leadership pathways rather than relying on informal succession connecting convenings with ongoing digital and organizational infrastructure building cycles of learning, implementation, dissemination, and renewal sustaining relationships across projects, institutions, and career stages The resource also includes bonus slides reflecting on BioQUEST’s 40-year history and what long-lived STEM education communities can teach us about continuity, adaptation, partnership, and sustained transformation. This presentation will serve as the foundation for a forthcoming chapter in an ACS symposium volume focused on communities in chemistry education.