From Graduate Students to Faculty: Portraits of Balance in the Professional Development Plans of Engineering Graduate Students

The job of a college engineering faculty member is multifaceted. Faculty are not only expected to teach and conduct research but also to write proposals, consult, network, engage in administrative duties, and the list continues. The relative importance and time allocated to these different functions vary according to the nature and focus of the institution and the interests of the faculty. However, engineering graduate students aspiring to careers in academe are not usually trained in the multiple facets of the profession. As a result, when they become faculty members they often struggle to find ways to balance the parallel and many times competing demands of these functions. This paper examines the professional development plans of six engineering graduate students with a marked interest in an academic career. These plans are one of the major deliverables of a three-credit graduate course at a large, research-intensive university. The overarching goal of this course, as stated on its syllabus, is to provide students with an opportunity to learn and practice the skills that complement and enhance classroom teaching and learning in a tenure-track faculty position, either at a research-intensive university or at an institution that focuses on undergraduate engineering education. The research questions that orientate the study are: What do the professional development plans of engineering graduate students portray about their striving for balance in their future faculty careers? How does writing a professional development plan with expert guidance in a formal class help these students prepare for a faculty position? The analysis of students’ professional development plans as qualitative artifacts, under the lens of expectations and values, reveals a wide variety of approaches to the role of faculty. Subsequent individual reflection on these plans allowed researchers to gather insights into why students chose to focus on different perspectives of the faculty job. Finally, a follow-up group conversation with the students shows that beneath these different perceptions and expectations lies the idea of balance, evolved and transformed by the discussions and activities of the course.