Abstract: Leaders, policymakers, and researchers have called attention to the need to improve critical aspects of physics programs, from teaching and pedagogy to making physics more diverse and equitable. As such programmatic changes are challenging and require a second-order change to be effective, many physics faculty responsible for carrying them out are not equipped with the necessary experience and support to do so. The American Physical Society developed the Departmental Action Leadership Institutes (DALIs) to meet the needs of the physics community by supporting physics faculty to effectively design and implement departmental change focusing on areas needing improvement. In this project, we developed case studies of five DALI-active physics programs from two DALI cohorts. We use a lens of cultural dynamics to document the dominant and emerging cultures around aspects related to how physics faculty approach and pursue change work. In this talk, I will share results that help us understand how the Department Action Team’s microculture is situated within the dominant departmental culture around assessment and educational change and discuss implications for practice