2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Contemporary graduate education in STEM has been characterized by persistent calls to enhance graduate programs and experiences with intentional and structured opportunities to develop pedagogical skills that prepare graduate students for future roles in academia. Despite the need to develop teaching skills, graduate programs tend to center research and discipline specific course work. Opportunities to develop pedagogical skills are often limited to one-semester instances where graduate students take teaching roles in a single course and learn on the job by observing faculty members. These limited opportunities are constrained to specific topics and learning environments, limiting the repertoire of pedagogical practices graduate students encounter and learn.

The University of Michigan Center for Socially Engaged Engineering & Design (C-SED) has created a Graduate Facilitator Program, active since 2018, that equips graduate students with core skills for classroom facilitation, and offers opportunities to facilitate sessions in the classrooms of partner faculty members. The program develops graduate student self-efficacy and prepares them for future teaching in diverse contexts through intense training and a supportive community of practice.

Following a just-in-time training model, Graduate Facilitators co-facilitate sociotechnical engineering & design content from C-SED’s library in curricular and co-curricular environments. Different from conventional TAs, C-SED Graduate Facilitators get hands-on experience preparing lessons and teaching in a diverse set of courses for over 2 or more years, affording time for practice and skill refinement. The program structure allows Graduate Facilitators to engage in different aspects of teaching, facilitating content and contributing to the design of educational sessions.

The present study discusses findings from a questionnaire (built around closed and open ended questions) distributed to current and former Graduate Facilitators. The questions focus on perceptions of self-efficacy regarding teaching and facilitation skills, perceived level of confidence in communicating sociotechnical concepts and skills, the influence on ideas around career possibilities, and perceptions around career readiness of young faculty.

The paper situates the findings in a discussion of the goals and structure of the program, the types of content and learning environments content is facilitated in, the frameworks used for training, and the affordances and challenges of the facilitator program. In addition to informing our systematic efforts to support graduate students in the development of pedagogical practices and skills, this study provides insights into strategies for supporting the professional development of graduate students and the kinds of experiences that graduate students can leverage and effectively call upon when on the job market.