Engineering Faculty Development: A Multicoalition Perspective

Pressures are building to reform American engineering education, not least of which is the impending adoption of Engineering Criteria 2000 as the default accreditation system. Teaching methods more effective than the traditional chalk-and-talk will be needed to equip engineering graduates with the technical, communication, and interpersonal skills specified in the new criteria, and extensive faculty development will be required to equip engineering instructors to use these methods. Unfortunately, participation in faculty development programs has never been part of the prevalent culture of engineering education. On April 7, 1999, representatives of the NSF-Sponsored Engineering Education Coalitions met at North Carolina State University to discuss the problem of establishing and sustaining faculty development programs in engineering and attracting widespread faculty involvement in the programs. The participants in this meeting agreed to use a faculty development model currently being developed and implemented by the SUCCEED Coalition 1 as a framework for the ideas collected. The components of the model are shown schematically in Figure 1 and described below, following which faculty development efforts of four coalitions are summarized. COMPONENTS OF A FACULTY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM FOR ENGINEERING Faculty development coordinator Either a respected engineering faculty member or an education specialist leads the program, is provided with adequate resources to accomplish program objectives, and is held accountable for the program’s success or failure. The coordinator is assisted by engineering faculty teaching leaders who lead workshops and coordinate teaching discussion/study groups. Linkages to campus-wide faculty development programs Engineering FD programs coordinate their activities with campus-wide FD programs to the greatest possible extent. Teaching center personnel participate as co-facilitators in engineering FD programs and encourage and coordinate participation of non-engineering faculty members to help broaden the perspectives of the engineering faculty. The engineering FD coordinator keeps engineering faculty informed about opportunities available to them through the teaching center and other campus-wide programs.