2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Building a community of educators: A peer-led pedagogical course for Bioengineering graduate students as TAs and research mentors

Presented at Professional Development and Career Pathways

Graduate students have integral roles in teaching and research in higher education, cultivating inclusive classroom and lab environments as graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) and research mentors. GTAs and research mentors can promote a sense of community and belonging within their departments through their interactions with undergraduate students, peers, staff, and faculty. Proper pedagogical training enables graduate students to clearly communicate in their graduate and post-graduate careers, provide transferable skills in effective research mentorship, improve the quality of undergraduate education, and reduce the teaching time commitment for faculty instructors. Unfortunately, graduate students in STEM are often expected to serve as TAs without sufficient training in pedagogical best practices. To meet this need, we designed and implemented a graduate student-led course titled "Evidence-based Approaches in Effective Teaching and Research Mentorship" that has been offered four times from 2022-2025 to a total of 51 participants.

Our 10-week seminar course aims to train graduate TAs to be effective and equitable educators, mentors, and communicators throughout their careers. The course is peer-led by a team of graduate student instructors and a department lecturer, and has three primary learning objectives. Participants should be able to (1) build practical skills for defining and accomplishing course or communication objectives; (2) implement actionable inclusive strategies to foster belonging and equity within the (classroom) community; and (3) for a final project & presentation, develop a tangible plan for applying effective teaching and communication skills to achieve personal and professional goals.

In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of the course through participant accomplishment of stated learning goals as well as measuring changes in participant self-efficacy as educators. In post-course survey data (n = 29-31), respondents strongly agreed that the course allowed them to achieve the three learning goals with a combined average score of 4.58 ± 0.56 on a 5-point Likert scale. Additionally, participants showed improvement in their self-efficacy as instructors after comparing pre- and post-course evaluations of teaching preparedness: 2.67 ± 0.99 pre-course vs. 4.27 ± 0.69 post-course. Respondents strongly agreed that the Bioengineering department needed a course on pedagogy and communication skills with an average score of 4.55 ± 0.83.

While the course was originally designed to address the needs of graduate TAs and research mentors, we believe that the course materials may be directly relevant to faculty interested in further developing their pedagogical and communication skills. Faculty sponsors reflected positively on their experience participating in and ability to learn new skills and theory through the course. In the future, we envision expanding course engagement to a broader audience, either by inviting faculty from the department to course discussions or by presenting course materials to faculty members in workshop format. Current ongoing work includes longitudinally tracking course participant outcomes in their later roles as TAs or research mentors within the bioengineering department to investigate long-term course efficacy. We hope that this work will catalyze the implementation of similar training-based courses to improve the pedagogical preparation of graduate TAs and faculty alike.

Authors

Mr. William T Yu http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8122-0811 Stanford University [biography]

William Yu (he/him/his) is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in Bioengineering investigating cartilage mechanobiology and immune profiling of Osteoarthritis patients undergoing orthobiologic treatments for pain. He also works as a part-time lecturer for a Tissue Engineering Lab course in UC Berkeley's BioE department and leads a BioE TA training course at Stanford. As a former Math and Physics Teaching Fellow at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, Will is passionate about STEM education and serves as a Pedagogy Program Lead for the Leadership in Teaching Fellowship Program at Stanford's Center for Teaching and Learning.
Kenji Marshall http://orcid.org/0009-0002-2557-6017 Stanford University [biography]

Kenji Marshall (he/him) is a PhD fourth-year PhD candidate in Bioengineering at Stanford University. He is committed to fostering scientific communities that value communication right alongside scientific excellence.
Megan S Fleeharty Stanford University [biography]

Megan Fleeharty (she/her) is a second-year Ph.D. student in Bioengineering at Stanford University.
Aya Mouallem http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9360-9971 Stanford University [biography]

Aya Mouallem (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering and MA candidate in Education at Stanford University. She received a BEng in Computer and Communications Engineering from the American University of Beirut. Aya is a graduate researcher with the Designing Education Lab at Stanford, led by Professor Sheri Sheppard, and her research explores accessibility in engineering education and the emerging role of AI in the space. She is supported by the Knight-Hennessy Scholarship and the RAISE Doctoral Fellowship.
Ms. Akshita A Rao Stanford University [biography]

Akshita Rao (she/her) is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Bioengineering at Stanford University with a strong commitment to inclusive, student-centered teaching. She has served as an instructor for Stanford’s pedagogy training course in the Bioengineering and a TA mentor supporting graduate instructors. Through her work as a Leadership in Inclusive Teaching Fellow, summer tutor, and peer mentor, Akshita strives to create learning environments that promote equity, confidence, and scientific communication. She is especially passionate about mentoring students at key academic transitions and helping them develop both technical mastery and professional identity.
Dr. Andrew Sho Perley http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2962-6245 Massachusetts General Hospital [biography]

Andrew Perley (he/him/his) was a PhD candidate in the Bioengineering department at Stanford University. Currently he serves as a postdoctoral researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in the department of Neurology. He has always had a passion for helping others learn from a young age and continues to strive to learn new ways to provide equitable opportunity for all learners. Andrew strongly believes that it is our job as educators to help students find confidence in their ability to learn and build community with others. In pursuit of building more inclusive and equitable systems in education, he strives to learn new ways to affect how we implement education at the department and school level. Andrew served as a co-coordinator for the Bioengineering TA program and is a Leadership in Inclusive Teaching Fellow at Stanford University.
Dr. Callan E Monette http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-1859-114X Rice University [biography]

Callan Monette (she/her) is the Assistant Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and Assistant Teaching Professor at Rice University. She earned her Ph.D. in Bioengineering at Stanford University, where she also served as a Graduate Teaching Consultant and Leadership in Inclusive Teaching Lead Fellow for the Center for Teaching and Learning. She also served as TA coordinator for the Bioengineering department, and co-created/co-taught BIOE 296: Effective and Equitable Teaching in Bioengineering from 2020-2023. Her current work is in cross-disciplinary faculty and graduate pedagogy training, but she is particularly passionate about inclusion and access in academic spaces, creative assessment design, and pedagogical wellness.
Ross Daniel Venook http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0582-5151 Stanford University [biography]

Ross is a Lecturer in the Bioengineering department and is the Associate Director for Engineering in the Biodesign program. He is also an R&D Fellow at Boston Scientific Neuromodulation, and he advises and works with non-profit and early-stage companies.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on July 31, 2026

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