A graduate course in faculty development

Engineering undergraduate and graduate programs in science and technology usually do not include teaching courses. Thus, most professors are forced to rely on their experience as students, and mimic good teaching practices of their model teachers. The work reported herein is an attempt to correct this by giving future professors an opportunity to develop good teaching practices while in graduate school, through a course in "faculty development". The course syllabus includes: student attraction and retention, assessment, course content, faculty development, teaching methods, program organization, relationship with students, lecture preparation, teaching techniques, ethics, and learning theory. The class is split into groups of four or less students, which must read the references and prepare short presentations for the topics planned for each meeting. Some of the students which take the course are already teaching at the time and are able to apply what they learn even as the course progresses, reporting positive reactions from their students, as well as improved learning and student attitude.