Year-long faculty development program for new engineering instructors: Description and evaluation

Abstract

This evidence-based practice paper reports on a year-long faculty development program for new engineering faculty members at the University of Illinois: its structure, its rationale, and its impact. Participants in the program are new faculty of any rank, and include tenure-track and teaching-track individuals. The program has existed for more than 20 years, but it went through a major revision and restructuring several years ago when it expanded to a year-long format with weekly meetings, classroom observations of the new faculty, visits to excellent teachers, and collection and review of student feedback. In addition to a full description of the program, evaluative data are reported from the participants' end-of-year survey results and an analysis of the faculty members student ratings of instruction compared to non-program participants. Background Faculty development in higher education has seen great growth over the last 30 years [1]. It makes sense, why hire new faculty if you are not going to train them to be successful? Since 1998, first-year faculty members in the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois have participated in a multifaceted program designed to help them succeed in their instructional responsibilities. We call this program the Collins Scholars in honor of W. Leighton Collins, a former executive director of ASEE and long-time faculty member at the University of Illinois. All new faculty are invited, and encouraged by the Dean, to participate in the program. Approximately 75% do so. They are a mix of tenure-track and specialized faculty (teaching-focused instructors, lecturers, and teaching assistant professors), but the majority are tenure-track assistant professors. These participants attend weekly seminars, for the entire academic year, on topics such as learning objectives, active learning, and grading. Actual topics covered in the 2018-2019 year are listed in Appendix A. An additional core part of the program is a classroom observation to receive formative feedback on their teaching. As part of the classroom observation process, instructors also gather informal early feedback from their students. The observation and early feedback results are discussed at a post-observation meeting. New faculty also observe, in small groups lead by a faculty development specialist, an excellent teacher in engineering. Details of these four components are provided below. While this is a large overall time commitment for new faculty, the program is spread over an entire year and the weekly seminars provide free lunch so the additional daily and weekly commitments are fairly minimal. Whether in the program or not, faculty need to eat lunch, right? Why not connect and learn while sampling free food. It should be noted that all of the assessment aspects of the program are kept between the program staff and the individual instructor. They are not shared with department or college administrators. This is part of the philosophy of the Collins Scholar program centered on the Latin root of assessment, assidere, which means to sit beside. As Braskamp and Ory [2] point out, this philosophy of formative assessment and collegial development is crucial for success. We consider the program and its activities as opportunities for coaching and working alongside a new faculty member in the spirit of support, not as summative evaluation. The new faculty appreciate this confidentiality and it fosters openness and trust without undue anxiety.