2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Work-in-Progress (WIP) paper examines teacher empathy as a critical yet underexamined dimension of engineering instructor’s professional practice. While empathy is often discussed as a desired student outcome–engineering students are increasingly expected to develop empathy as part of their professional formation (Empathic Design)–far less attention has been given to how instructors interpret and respond to student needs while navigating expectations of academic quality, fairness, and institutional accountability. This study asks: How do personal, institutional, and disciplinary contexts shape the processes through which empathy is enacted or withheld in interactions between engineering instructors and students? Data are drawn from semi-structured interviews with engineering instructors across diverse contexts. Using thematic analysis, preliminary findings suggest that empathy functions as situated professional judgment involving interpretation of student cues, assessment of capacity and fairness, and negotiation of institutional constraints. These insights highlight empathy as a developable teaching practice with important implications for faculty development.
Keywords: Teacher Empathy, Faculty Development, Engineering Education, Professional Growth.
Preferred presentation format: Work-in-Progress lightning round table.