2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 298: From Cohort to Classroom: Transitioning to Year 2 in a Faculty Learning Community

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

In the College of Engineering, Design and Computing at the University of Colorado Denver, a faculty learning community (FLC) is exploring how to apply known pedagogical practices intended to foster equity and inclusion. Faculty come from all five departments of the college. For this three-year NSF-funded project, Year 1 was dedicated to deepening reflection as individuals and building trust as a cohort. Now, in Year 2, the FLC is focused on translating pedagogical practices from literature and other resources into particular courses. This cohort has experienced some adjustments as some faculty leave the FLC and new faculty choose to join the FLC. Since this cohort continues to grow, this paper presents key features that have supported the FLC’s formation and then transition to Year 2, as well as the design and implementation of a new faculty orientation, called the Welcome Academy, specific to new engineering faculty and practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Finally, drawing on the principal investigator (PI) team’s reflections as well as feedback from external evaluators, we provide our insights with the intention of sharing useful experiences to other colleges planning to form such FLCs.

Authors

Prof. Katherine Goodman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5235-3372 University of Colorado, Denver [biography]

Katherine Goodman is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver in the College of Engineering, Design and Computing. She also serves as curriculum lead at Inworks, an interdisciplinary innovation lab. Her research focuses on transformative experiences in engineering education. She has served as program chair and division chair of the Technological and Engineering Literacy - Philosophy of Engineering (TELPhE) Division.
Dr. Heather Lynn Johnson http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-8865-2075 [biography]

Heather Lynn Johnson is a mathematics educator who investigates students’ math reasoning. She designs tasks to help students to expand their math reasoning, and she studies how instructors and departments transform practices to grow students’ math reasoning.
Prof. Maryam Darbeheshti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7988-0906 University of Colorado, Denver [biography]

Dr. Maryam Darbeheshti is Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado, Denver. She is the PI of a recent NSF award that focuses on STEM identity at Urban Universities.
Prof. David C. Mays http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5218-1670 University of Colorado Denver [biography]

David Mays is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Colorado Denver. He earned his B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995, then taught high school through Teach for America and worked as a contractor at Los Alamos National Laboratory before earning his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley in 1999 and 2005, respectively. He has been at CU Denver since 2005, where he teaches fluid mechanics and hydrology, studies flow in porous media using ideas from complex systems science, leads the graduate track in Hydrologic, Environmental, and Sustainability Engineering (HESE), and advocates for broadening participation in engineering. He is a registered professional engineer (PE) in California and Colorado.
Prof. Tom Altman [biography]

Tom Altman received his B.S. degrees in Computer Science and in Mathematics, and M.S. and Ph.D. (1984) in Computer Science, all from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Altman specializes in optimization algorithms, formal language theory, and complex syste

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