Bringing Adjunct Engineering Faculty into the Learning Community

Adjunct faculty can offer enrichment to an engineering program by bringing practical experience and by introducing relevant industrial applications and problems to the classroom. The industrial perspective of adjunct faculty often manifests itself through an emphasis on communication and presentation skills, and concern for customer needs. Students observing these attributes come away with a better appreciation for the demands of the engineering workplace. Adjunct faculty members can also provide important linkages for developing industrial affiliate programs, co‐op activities, and employment opportunities for graduates. Nevertheless, the position of adjunct faculty is tenuous, subject to shifting enrollments, negative student perception, and limited connectivity with the mainstream issues of the academic department. Adjunct faculty who teach in engineering programs will almost always come with excellent technical credentials, but they will have little or no teacher training or knowledge of learning principles and cognitive psychology. With limited time on campus, adjunct faculty have little opportunity to improve their teaching skills and methods, resulting in a “sink or swim” environment. At the Colorado School of Mines (CSM), we have evolved a regimen of strategies to ensure the quality of the educational program and to support the teaching effectiveness and professional commitment of adjunct faculty. These strategies have improved student and faculty satisfaction with adjunct faculty, and indeed have improved adjunct faculty self‐satisfaction. These strategies are described in the current paper.