January 22, 2025

CERSE Staff Collaborating with Faculty-led ASEE Team to Pilot Faculty Recognition Framework for Professional Development in Teaching

Engineering graduate students typically spend five years earning their Ph.D., conducting important, cutting-edge research in an area of national interest. Most of those who earn their Ph.D. in engineering wind up working in research positions within industry or government laboratories to start. A small percentage, however, become faculty members working at colleges across the US (and beyond). While these engineering faculty members will teach several courses in their discipline each year, most have received little, if any, training in how to teach. A team of faculty, aided by eight colleges across the US and buoyed by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), have recently received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to change this situation.

“For more than 100 years, people have recognized this unfortunate situation where those tasked to teach in engineering and engineering technology aren’t well trained in this task,” says Donald P. Visco, Jr., Chair of the ASEE Faculty Teaching Excellence Task Force (FTE TF) and Professor of Chemical Engineering at The University of Akron. “There are many reasons for this, but a crucial one is that such professional development in teaching is not nationally recognized. Our work looks to address this shortcoming.”

The ASEE Faculty Teaching Excellence Task Force is developing a three-level framework to support and document faculty members’ professional development in teaching. The first level covers key educational concepts related to teaching and learning in college-level engineering and engineering technology courses. The second level focuses mainly on applying these concepts in the classroom. The third level recognizes faculty who, after becoming accomplished teachers, make impacts outside their own classrooms (e.g., through leading education efforts to benefit others).

“ASEE is a unique organization with membership that spans horizontally across all engineering and engineering technology disciplines and affinity groups, and vertically across primary, secondary, higher education, and industry constituencies. This work is critically important as engineering education moves rapidly forward to embrace new technologies and broaden participation globally.” Dr. Jacqueline El-Sayed, former ASEE CEO.

The first level of the recognition framework is being piloted, with the support of the NSF, at eight diverse colleges of engineering across the United States. Those schools are The College of New Jersey, Lafayette College, Northern Arizona University, University of Bridgeport, University of Georgia, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, The University of the Pacific, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Khaled Elleithy, Dean of the College of Engineering, Business, and Education at the University of Bridgeport, comments that his “faculty are very excited with the prospect of receiving national recognition for their training towards teaching excellence, which supports the college mission of enhancing critical thinking through high-quality innovative programs and conscientious teaching, research, and collaborative experiential learning projects.” Lauren Anderson, Jeffers Dean of Engineering at Lafayette College, states that “if we want to recruit and retain diverse undergraduate students, we must provide opportunities for faculty to continuously improve their teaching practices and then recognize, celebrate, and elevate their efforts and accomplishments in this area.” Andrea Welker, Dean of the School of Engineering at The College of New Jersey, echoes this sentiment, adding that her faculty “pride themselves on being master teachers,” so they are well pleased to be part of this initiative to “recognize and certify engineering educators via this national program.”

Those professional development providers who create the content for the first-level of training will initially come from the Pilot 8 institutions, as well as about two dozen partner schools across the country. Additionally, the team will engage the National Effective Teaching Institute (NETI) as a content provider for this first-level training. After the pilot is concluded, any content provider around the US and beyond will be eligible to submit their training to be considered for this certification effort.

The ASEE FTE TF Management Team, led by Visco, will implement the grant, and includes El-Sayed, Douglas Bohl (Associate Dean for Academic Programs in The College of Engineering at Clarkson University), Jenna Carpenter (Dean, College of Engineering, Campbell University), Alan Cheville (Professor of Electrical Engineering, Bucknell University), Charles Henderson (Professor of Physics, Western Michigan University), and Elizabeth Litzler, Director, CERSE, University of Washington). The ASEE FTE Task Force itself consists of more than two dozen faculty, faculty administrators, and training content providers from close to thirty US institutions.

Rae Jing Han, a Research Scientist at UW CERSE, will lead the CERSE research efforts to generate insights that inform the project’s future as well as produce knowledge that is broadly relevant to other faculty development initiatives. Research will focus on university community members’ perceptions about professional development programs, strategies for recruiting participants, approaches to selecting learning opportunities, and shifts in teaching practices. Research efforts will also explore how the implementation and effects of a certification framework vary across different institutional contexts.

Deans or their designees from an additional two dozen engineering colleges across the US will serve as the grant Evaluation Board.

“NETI is excited to be a part of this project,” says Matthew Ohland, one of three Co-Directors of NETI, along with Susan Lord and Michael Prince. “The second fundamental canon of the Code of Ethics of the National Society of Professional Engineers states that engineers shall ‘perform services only in areas of their competence’ – second only to the importance of the safety, health, and welfare of the public. Nevertheless, the engineering education system is designed with the assumption that teaching requires no special competence. This project will help address this shortcoming and help NETI achieve its mission of improving teaching in ways that fit an instructor’s institution, their students, and their own personal style.”