Understanding And Utilizing Adjunct Professors For Non Traditional Engineering And Technology Graduate Education

Re-envisioning adjunct faculty members for non-traditional engineering graduate education is developing ways to effect a national dialogue on how to re-envision and position engineering graduate education to meet both the technology and societal needs of the 21st century. This paper adds value for the preparation of adjunct faculty members as graduate instructors and future teaching scholars. The paper contains an expanding set of Promising Practices in engineering and technology education that are currently being used. Teaching at the graduate level requires a high level of motivation in faculty who are committed to excellence in knowledge, in research, and in contributions to the profession, and/or serve to the community. Adjunct professors are an excellent way to bridge with the community and add richness to many course and degree program offerings. Historical Perspective The role of the adjunct within the modern university professional school is ambiguous something more than a casual visitor less than a fully participating member of the faculty. This changing role of the adjunct is closely related to the changing role of the professional school itself. To consider the potential role of the adjunct it is necessary to understand this common evolution. During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the college or university focused on the humanities and the classical languages of Greek and Latin. Gradually this curriculum expanded to include the natural sciences. By the end of the eighteenth century the forerunners of the social sciences such as political economy and sociology were becoming accepted. Practical skills and professions were still learned primarily through apprenticeship. The “learned professions” of theology, medicine, and law increasingly drew their members from those with prior university training and were gradually (and often P ge 7.225.1 “Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ” 2002, American Society for Engineering Education” grudgingly) accepted within the university structure. Engineering and business (now management) were still learned through apprenticeship supplemented by courses often evening courses taken at mechanics’ institutes and “colleges” of business. By the beginning of the nineteenth century however, the increasing complexity of technology, markets, and organizations required greater preparation than could be obtained through this informal system. “Shop culture” was being replaced by “school culture. 3 One of the first of the new professional schools was the Rensselaer School (now Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) established at Troy, New York in 1824. From the beginning, emphasis was on practical experience including field and laboratory work (referred to in the curriculum as “scholastic amusements”). Close relations were maintained with graduates and other practicing engineers. For example, graduates were expected to communicate at least once in three years the results of their investigations and discoveries. By 1827, RPI began to stress the graduate status of the school courses at the institute were intended primarily for those who had completed their academic education and special provisions were established for graduates of recognized colleges and the US Military Academy. As the population of the United States moved westward more and more state universities were established: Ohio in 1804, Michigan in 1817, Indiana in 1820, Wisconsin in 1848. In many cases there was conflict between those who wanted to pattern these schools on the east coast liberal arts models such as Harvard and those who wanted them to focus on practical training. In the latter case this was satisfied by including schools of “practical arts” or courses in mechanics, accounting, and agriculture. Graduates of RPI often played important roles in developing these. This approach expanded rapidly after the passage of the Morrill Land Grant Act in 1862. Early engineering schools maintained close working relationships with both their graduates and with other practicing engineers and managers. Professors held simultaneous or intermittent positions in government and industry. Through both choice and necessity, the new schools drew on outside groups for faculty. Practicing engineers and managers also played important roles in the development of the professions of engineering and management and in the development of professional societies Civil Engineers in 1852, Mining Engineers in 1871, Mechanical Engineers in 1880. To cite a few examples: Henry R. Towne, President of the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company, whose 1886 paper at the ASME meetings, “The Engineer as an Economist,” led to the formation of a section within the ASME on engineering economics and the field of industrial engineering, Frederick W. Taylor whose application of engineering principles to shop management led to the development of “Scientific Management,” an approach that dominated management thought for well over 50 years, Edward A. Filene, President of William Filene Sons department store (and Filene’s Basement), and Henry S. Dennison, President of Dennison Manufacturing Company. All of these men were active in professional societies both in the United States and internationally. They worked professionally, wrote and presented papers, and played active roles in the development of P ge 7.225.2 “Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ” 2002, American Society for Engineering Education” manufacturing and management thought. In 1931, McGraw-Hill published the text, Organizational Engineering, by Henry Dennison. These men and many others like them regularly lectured at universities throughout the United States and the world. Thus, throughout the first half of the twentieth century there was an active interchange between the professional schools and the practicing professions. At the same time, the definition of a professional school expanded to include fields such as education, social work, communications, and mortuary science. But by the 1950s this interchange had begun to wane. Following World War II, the GI Bill attracted thousands of veterans into the universities. Anxious to make up for lost time they crowded into the professional schools. The increasing visibility of these schools again raised the concerns over the role of professional schools within the universities. This concern was expressed in different ways. The most relevant here was that directed toward the “academic” quality of the faculty as defined by the degrees held and the need for faculty holding “terminal degrees.” For the historic learned professions this was not a problem; the DD. MD, JD, or accepted equivalents were routinely held by members of the corresponding professions. For engineering, management, and the other newer professions, the terminal degree was defined as the Ph.D. or equivalent. Active adjuncts had in too many cases been defined out of the field. In the professional societies also, the role of the practicing engineer or manager began to change. Academic members faced with “publish or perish” requirements became the major contributors to meeting agendas and professional journals. Non-academics took on an increasingly passive role. This was balanced by another phenomenon. Increased need for and interest in continuing education led to the rapid expansion of evening and extension courses. Most of these tended to be in engineering and management. At the same time faculty course loads were decreasing to make way for increased research and publication. Graduate students took some of the slack but increasingly it was necessary to turn to adjuncts to staff courses. Adjuncts were too often looked on as second class stand-ins or “warm bodies” filling vacant lines in the class schedules. Too often also they perceived themselves in the same way. They were assigned classes, syllabuses, and textbooks and took as given the academic teaching role assigned. During this process, the potential for the practical, “clinical,” and critical perspectives for which they are particularly fitted have too often be