Holistic Mentoring through Sharing an Entire Course Built on the ExCEEd Model

Faculty mentoring is a process/activity that can occur early, mid-career, or even when administrators are returning to a teaching role. Mentoring can take on numerous forms to include classroom observation, discussions on content within a course, philosophical discussion over what content to include and how it can be best delivered, formal/informal review of course content, review of individual lesson notes, sharing a syllabus and text, and the sharing of lesson notes, homework, exams, design problems, and study guides or any portion of the aforementioned. However, what type of mentoring is the most effective at rapidly improving the quality of instruction? This paper presents the results of one faculty member completing a combination of the above as a form of holistic mentoring (using multiple mentoring processes, but especially the use of sharing an entire course) with two new faculty members, a lecturer, and two mid-term faculty members. The analysis examines student assessments and faculty reflections on the mentoring process and how it greatly improved their current methods to prepare and then teach follow-on courses. This paper will highlight that the demonstration of teaching techniques from the ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Model to new instructors while teaching a course can rapidly change the quality of faculty instruction.