This project has been developed to address the issue of preparing future faculty, an issue acutely faced by graduate students and faculty in STEM disciplines, where faculty are expected to not only keep up with rapid progress in their fields, but also to create and implement innovative strategies for teaching students to navigate the complex intersections of scientific and technological advances and society. The problem, however, spans disciplines, and is two-fold: first, we need to ensure that some of our best students pursue careers in academia, and second, we need to prepare these future faculty with the skills and institutional support to excel in these academic careers. Research studies have found that many Ph.D. programs are preparing students for research careers at universities, even though there are a limited number of research positions available; and, even when these students do attain university positions, they are not well-prepared for the demands of those careers. Since 1993, the Council of Graduate Schools and the American Association of Colleges & Universities has engaged in the Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) initiative designed to "transform the way aspiring faculty members are prepared for their careers". Furthermore, in a recent publication focused on faculty in science and mathematics, the PFF program "identifies teaching, research, and service as the three expectations for faculty at most institutions of higher learning and asserts that graduate students planning to join the faculty should begin learning about each of these elements of the academic profession". This problem has also been noted in engineering education: many graduate programs focus on specializing in a research area, often at the expense of training future educators for teaching. As Jamieson and Lohmann assert in their 2009 ASEE report, Creating a Culture for Scholarly and Systematic Innovation in Engineering Education, "we must strengthen career-long professional development in teaching and learning, starting with the doctoral programs that produce most engineering faculty". Even graduate students who plan for industry, government or non-profit careers should possess the skills of "knowing how to explain difficult concepts; what misconceptions, preconceived notions, and biases people bring to learning; how to work with diverse groups; [and] how to use learning and collaboration technologies". However, many students do not have the opportunity to teach during their graduate career, and many teaching assistantship programs do not provide pedagogical training. Also, within prevailing academic cultures in engineering, teaching assistantships are often not as highly valued as research assistantships.
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