2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In this research paper, we explore the professional transitions experienced by an engineering faculty member across role types, discipline affiliations, and institution types. Many engineering academics enter the academy having been told a “single story” of success: an individual with a discipline-based PhD obtains a tenure-track faculty position where their goal is to gain tenure and promotion, all within a single field of research established during their PhD. To the detriment of our profession, that story fails to capture the experiences of many engineering faculty.

We want to understand how identity shapes, and is shaped by, a faculty member’s professional decision-making in times of transition. Our research questions are: (1) What is the scope and complexity of professional transitions for this faculty member? (2) What is the interaction between identity and this faculty member’s experience of professional transition? These questions are addressed through an auto-ethnographic study exploring the reflections of an engineering faculty member’s journey through eight professional transitions. Data will be collected through an interview of the autoethnographer conducted by a coauthor with experience in qualitative methods, as well as through memoing by the autoethnographer.

Existing studies of faculty transitions tend to focus on career progression for tenure-track faculty members, transitions into the academy, transitions into the discipline of engineering education research, or transitions to and from administrative roles. Cutler and Coso Strong [1] identify gaps in the literature concerning mid-career faculty transitions, calling for “additional research into the experiences, motivations, and career decisions of mid-career (and late-career) faculty” (pg. 297). Our work is situated in this gap by examining transitions that happen mid-career, involve a variety of role types, and take place across a diversity of institution types.

Using the theoretical framework of Identity-Based Motivation (IBM), we find that transitions proceed in stages and are more complex than a transition being characterized by leaving one role to inhabit the next. Rather, there is a distinct interstitial time in which professional decision-making evolves as the landscape of identity-congruent moves changes in response to shifts in salient identity. Additionally, we find that transitions may provide an opportunity for identities to emerge or re-emerge as possible future identities. These findings support the use of IBM as a theoretical lens to understand faculty transitions, as well as in providing evidence that the development in professional identity throughout the time of transition can help faculty members persist in re-entering the tenure-track pathway. Given the challenges of sustaining a healthy pipeline of a diverse STEM faculty, broadening access to the tenure-track beyond the entry point described by the “single story” narrative of success is an important implication of continued work in understanding and supporting faculty transitions.

Preferred presentation method: round-table discussion

[1] S. Cutler and A. Coso Strong, “The Overlooked Impact of Faculty on Engineering Education,” in International Handbook of Engineering Education Research, Routledge, 2023.