Over the last 30 years, formally structured inter-organizational networks have risen in popularity as a strategy for addressing large-scale and complex societal problems. Within higher education, many inter-organizational networks organize to reform undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education to promote the quantity, quality, and diversity of STEM graduates. While formal networks in undergraduate STEM education reform play a role in officially linking higher education institutions, literature points to the existence of an unstructured informal network emerging from the connections established by connecting organization in reform. This sequential quan-Qual mixed methods study highlights a small, informal inter-organizational network of leaders in formal STEM networks. Implications underscore emergent network roles in the facilitation, maintenance, and sustainability of the formal networks, and larger impacts of this group in undergraduate STEM education reform efforts. Broader impacts speak to a greater role of informal networks in innovation, organizational sense-making, and systemic change, and invites critical constituents in reform efforts to utilize emergent networks more intentionally.
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