Effective professional development of engineering educators: A future outlook

Engineering faculty, in general and the juniors in particular, need to expand their technical knowledge and develop new competencies to further their technical professional development. This paper explores ways to effective professional development of junior engineering educators, to enable them to assume the roles they are entrusted with. The purpose here is to offer a new way to think about the development of the professional engineering educator. In this respect, the paper focuses on:(i) the cognitive processes that faculty would tend to follow as they grow and learn more about teaching, (ii) the discipline-based industrial/practical experience they need to acquire to add to their repertoire as "practitioners" of engineering, and (iii) the institutional initiatives, including: administrative support, encouragement, and resources. What is needed is a change in culture within the institution, i.e., the department or college, to generate a comprehensive integrated set of components: articulated expectations, a reward system aligned with expectations, and opportunities for professional development to occur. The ultimate goal is to identify what educators and their institutions can do to generate more powerful and responsive forms of education that improves the quality of student learning.