2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In this Lessons Learned paper, three faculty with 2-20 years of experience teaching in predominately undergraduate institutions (PUI), and 3-25 years of industry experience reflect on our first semester transitioning to Professor of Practice faculty roles at a large midwestern R1 university. The unifying theme of our collective experience centers around moving into a full time non-tenure track position that is distinct from our tenured and tenure-track colleagues, but is otherwise ill-defined. Our goal in presenting our stories and reflections is two-fold. First, we hope to provide a firsthand account of the challenges and successes of such a transition to those considering a similar career move. Second, through our collaboration we also discovered shared experiences that illuminated institutional and cultural disconnects that we believe would be valuable to communities who are concerned with professional development, cultural identities, and career pathways in and out of various roles within academia.

In our paper, we share our individual stories and key areas of commonality and difference in our experiences. Three key findings we’ve discovered include:

1. Even as faculty with significant teaching experience, we each expressed a need for mentorship and guidance around classroom systems and practices during the transition from teaching at a PUI to an R1 context.

2. Where we collectively struggled the most was navigating “what is my role here” and “how is my role different” type of questions that were grounded in a lack of understanding expectations across institutional, college, and departmental levels.

3. Individually, we have each brought internalized narratives that seemed embedded in the PUI culture that impacted our approach to teaching and enculturation into a new departmental and institutional structure.

Finally, despite the challenges discussed above we acknowledged feeling welcomed and empowered to craft a unique path for ourselves that organically grows from our unique experiences. We prefer that this paper is presented as a lightning talk.