Preparing for an academic career — The engineering faculty of tomorrow

To prepare our interested graduate students for careers as engineering educators, a three year graduated teaching experience has been developed combining face-to-face teaching experience with a seminar and workshops to provide some formal training in STEM higher education instruction. The department´s “Academic Careers” seminar provides an introduction to the three major aspects of the academic career - teaching, research and service. Students also enroll in our Preparing Future Faculty and Professionals Program (PFFP). In the graduated teaching experience, students work first as teaching assistants, then as a member of the instructional team for a course helping to develop and deliver instructional materials and then, in the third year, the students have full teaching responsibility for a significant segment of that course. Feedback is provided to the students from seasoned engineering educators. Participation in these experiences allows our students to begin their academic careers with confidence. To date, five students have completed this program; there are four students currently in the program. The training program is more completely described in this paper together with program assessment information from former participants, both graduate students and their undergraduate students, and how the program has been modified based on these assessments for the current participants.