2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As a whole, engineering graduate students prepare for a broad range of post-graduate careers. Providing meaningful, hands-on training and experiences with non-technical skills relating to career preparation often falls to co- and extra-curricular professional development programming, add-ons that can feel disconnected from trainees’ academic environments.

Teaching-related skills in particular are integrated into many engineering doctoral programs through graduate teaching assistantships; however, these experiences tend to be limited in scope. Many teaching assistantships are engaged primarily in support of faculty instructors rather than authentic teaching – including course design and delivery – for the student trainee.

We administer an experiential, hands-on teaching fellowship program, wherein an engineering graduate student or post-doctoral trainee co-designs and co-instructs a semester-long course with a mentoring faculty instructor. The teaching fellowship program offers participants the opportunity to develop and hone teaching skills beyond a teaching assistantship, better preparing them for future careers in academia and beyond. Each fellow works closely with their faculty mentor in a cooperative teaching experience. The program begins with fellow-mentor pairs participating in an intensive course design experience administered by the institution’s teaching center to produce a learning-focused course and syllabus. Fellows then co-teach the course they have designed (or redesigned) with their faculty mentor, with each contributing equally to the design and teaching of the course. Throughout the semester, the pairs meet regularly under the guidance of a program advisor – a faculty member from the teaching center – to exchange experiences and ideas as a cohort with other participants.

Program participants have varied career outcomes both within and beyond academia. Faculty mentors benefit from the fresh perspective offered by their mentees, as well as the support built into the cohort model as facilitated by the program advisor. The basic elements of the teaching fellowship program overlap with the wide range of post-graduate experiences that engineering graduate students take on. Participants learn pedagogical strategies and mentorship skills that are useful in teaching undergraduate and graduate courses independently, as well as in non-academic educational settings. Along with the oral and written communication skills participants learn as a teacher, they also learn to be part of a team, collaborate closely with mentors, work cooperatively, design and develop training materials and protocols, and communicate with stakeholders like clients and colleagues. These skills are often listed in job descriptions that span postings within and beyond academia and prepare students for countless career options.