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THE ENGINEERING EDUCATION SCHOLARS PROGRAM
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
To remain competitive and yet foster partnerships, U.S. higher education requires better integration of both teaching scholarship and research scholarship. Likewise, the U.S. economy requires that some of our best and brightest young people choose to enter the engineering profession. In addition, both pedagogical techniques and content knowledge are necessary to prepare effective teachers for engineering classrooms. To these ends, the University of Wisconsin-Madison proposed and received National Science Foundation support to implement a cultural change approach to engineering education. The goal of the program is to "provide a professional development program that will help those who seek an academic teaching position become more competitive." Funding is for three years, contingent on yearly reviews, and features a one-week program each year with two basic goals: first, to create an improved, student-centered, problem-based, team approach to teaching and learning instead of a faculty-centered, traditional approach; and second, to focus on both research and teaching instead of primarily research. This paper describes the first Engineering Education Scholars Program (EESP) held July 16-20, 1996, the outcomes and program evaluations with comments from participants, synthesis by third-party evaluators, NSF feedback, changes for the July 6-12, 1997 program, and the partnerships involved.
1996 ENGINEERING EDUCATION SCHOLARS PROGRAM (EESP)
This section describes the need, the objectives, goals, and expectations, program components, and the partnerships including participants, outside experts, and inside experts.
Need: This NSF-sponsored, Engineering Education Scholars Program (EESP) initiative provides the College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison with a unique opportunity to bring about a cultural change in engineering education. It provides us with the ability to develop teaching expertise and an innovative program to enhance our already strong commitment to undergraduate education and teaching improvement. A cultural change approach to engineering education means shifts to student-centered, problem-based, team learning from faculty-centered, traditional, individual teaching as well as a shift to focusing on both research and teaching instead of focusing primarily on research. To achieve these goals, we developed an integrated Engineering Education Scholars Program for both graduate engineering students and new engineering faculty.
We are building on what's being done to bring about a cultural change in engineering education. For example, at the national level are milestones for undergraduate faculty preparation and enhancement (The Committee on Education and Training, 1995). A variety of faculty preparation programs have emerged following the Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) initiative, like the Howard University Cluster model (Taylor, 1995) (Dennee, 1995) (Smith, 1995) (Stern and Ellis, 1995).
While the trend is that most new PhDs are employed outside academe (Reshaping the Graduate Education of Scientists and Engineers) the competition for those who wish to pursue an academic career is keen. Furthermore, those who do accept a teaching position will find themselves teaching in settings unlike those in which they pursued their own undergraduate and doctorate degrees. Therefore, we focus our attention on graduate students who wish to pursue academe.
Finally, we recognize that the "observation that teachers teach as they were taught applies even more strongly to college faculty. Our system of graduate education produces a cadre of college and university teachers who have little concept of teaching as a profession. (National Research Council, Committee on Mathematical Sciences in the Year 2000, 1991)."
Both pedagogical techniques and content knowledge are necessary to prepare effective teachers for engineering classrooms. Given the needs for curricular and pedagogical reform in engineering, the high attrition rates of students in engineering, and the necessity to "broaden the training" of engineering graduate students, we will focus our attention on engineering and physical science graduate students interested in pursuing an academic career.
Our goal is to provide a professional development program that will help those who seek an academic teaching position become more competitive. Therefore, we help our participants develop the skills they will need in a variety of academic career options.
"Mismatches exist between common learning styles of engineering students and traditional teaching styles of engineering professors. In consequence, students become bored and inattentive in class, do poorly on tests, get discouraged about the courses, the curriculum, and themselves, and in some cases change to other curricula or drop out of school. Professors, confronted by low test grades, unresponsive or hostile classes, poor attendance and dropouts, know something is not working; they may become overly critical of their students (making things even worse) or begin to wonder if they are in the right profession. Most seriously, society loses potentially excellent engineers." (Felder, 1988)
Goals and Expectations: The program has the following objectives for all participants:
While the goals stated above provided the framework for the program, comments from the program organizers, local experts, and the participants provided specific perspectives related to their understanding of the goals. These comments come from focus group discussions with local experts and organizers and pre-program surveys of participants (Pfatteicher and Millar, 1996).
Program organizers during pre-program focus groups further described their hopes for the program as follows. Their comments related to awareness of teaching and learning strategies, desire for networking among participants and experts after the program, and usefulness to local experts as well as to participants. They clearly did not expect the program to provide thorough training in teaching methods, but rather expected the workshop to expose participants to a variety of ideas about teaching and to encourage them to experiment with new ways of teaching.
Just that spending five days thinking about learning, teaching, those aspects will be different, will provide a break with the normal, "I have to get my thesis done, and that's the only thing I'm concerned with. "
I would hope we would see progress in the willingness for these participants to explore and try new ways of doing things.... They've heard about successful experiences from other people, and now they're willing to try, it and not be scared and also not be scared to share that experience with other people and to learn from it and to improve so that the next time! they feel more comfortable.
Just one other subtle piece that may come of this, and I hope does is a real focus on the learning as opposed to the teaching that we all grew up with. I mean, it all does wrap together.
Local experts talked about their understanding of the goals of the program, their realistic expectations of this first year of the program, their ideal hopes for the program as it matures, their concerns about the limitations of a program as short, focused, and expensive as EESP necessarily is, and about ways for both the experts and the participants to extend the lessons learned during the EESP. They specifically described the needs they believe new engineering professors have that are not being met by most graduate programs. They identified a variety of needs, which fell into two general categories: information and skills. Both of these types of needs are often complicated by issues of diversity.
Providing new engineering faculty with all of this information and each of these skills is a tall order. The EESP can not reasonably be expected to deal completely with all of these needs. But part of the message the local experts wished to convey is that it is important that the EESP organizers and participants be aware of the array of needs, nonetheless. For participants, knowing that there are things they will need to know is the first, and perhaps most important, step. Many of the local experts described the EESP as a starting point rather than a cure-all, using metaphors to say that EESP should "introduce the waterfront," or provide"a boosting step," "the beginning of the conversation," or "a good stepping stone." They expressed the hope that participants will walk away with an appreciation for the variety of subjects they need to consider and with an introduction to the resources that are available to help them learn about those subjects.
I don't think it's possible to hit on absolutely everything and to cover absolutely everything. All one can do is simply introduce the waterfront and then let somebody travel down each road. I don 't think you can really expect more.
This whole program is not a panacea for all the problems that we have. I think you should, you know, we should all state that repeatedly.... It's not going to solve all the problems. What it's going to do, in my view is provide a firm boost to individuals so that they are able to express themselves and to pursue their creative work. I want it to be a boosting step to help enable individuals to succeed in what they want to do. In what THEY want to do, not what I want them to do or what the college of engineering wants them to do, or the granting agency wants them to do, what THEY want to do. And if what they want to do fits into an environment we call an academic environment, great. If it doesn't fit, hey, there are [other] endeavors in life one can pursue.
I guess it's way more of the introduction or the beginning of the conversation [and] hopefully the conversation continues throughout their careers. To me, I think it's hard to imagine that these five days would be so packed with information that they would have people who would actually walk away with that much that they would not want to or need to do other things.
I'm hoping it's a good stepping stone.
Components: The program itself had four major components: the program workshops, networking, transition plan from outside experts to local expert teams, and continuous evaluation plan for improvement.
1. Program workshops: Hands-on workshops designed by recognized leaders provided content knowledge about teaching and learning plus opportunities for participants to apply this knowledge to their own teaching and to reflect on their own learning and how that affects their teaching. Workshops included the following topics: 1) learning and teaching styles, 2) undergraduate retention issues in engineering, 3) qualities of effective classroom presentations, 4) educational pedagogy with Bloom's taxonomy, learning objectives, and strategies, 5) tests and other strategies to assess student learning, 6) computer technology for presentations and communication, 7) problem-based leaming, 8) innovative approaches to teaching to create creative engineers, 8) distance learning technologies, 9) issues concerning climbing the academic ladder, and 10) diversity issues. Facilities for the workshops include state-of-the art classrooms and auditorium, distance-education studio, and a computer-aided engineering laboratory.
2. Networking to Build Collaborative Faculty Teams for Enhanced Learning: Opportunities for further interaction and learning even after the summer program ended consist of continuing dialog among participants and experts using electronic mail. 3. Transition Plan from Outside Experts to Local Expert Team: The plan is to evolve from workshops led largely by outside experts with local experts facilitating small group discussions to workshops led by local expert teams. We anticipate the number of outside experts will decrease by half in the second year and include one or two consultants in the third year. The specific nature of the workshops in the third year will depend on feedback from participants and the expert teams.
4. Continuous Evaluation, Assessment, and Dissemination: Our activities are being partially guided by faculty-initiated evaluation. Facilitating these efforts will be the "Learning through Evaluation, Adaptation, and Dissemination" (LEAD) team, directed by an anthropologist trained in the evaluation of organizational structures and the assessment of teaching/learning in higher education. Drawing on knowledge gained through evaluation and assessment, our LEAD team is working with project faculty to produce innovative and effective adaptations of workshops as well as dissemination materials and strategies.
Goals for the evaluation and the evaluation design including the methods and schedule of the research activity fall into three areas: a) assessment of learning, b) evaluation of program, and c) dissemination of innovative and effective materials.
Partnerships: Partnerships are forged among the participants, outside experts, inside experts, and the leaders at National Science Foundation.
1. The Engineering Scholars: Thirty engineering scholars emerged from a national search that included an application, qualification, and selection process. The majority of the scholars were PhD candidates who are pursuing academe; three participants were new faculty. The application process was primarily through electronic mail. The selection process included criteria to assure a diverse population in terms of geography, engineering discipline, gender, ethnic background, and institution.
2. Outside and inside experts: Outside experts provided expertise for specific issues. Following the workshop, they met with the local experts to review the workshop. We created cross-disciplinary teams of both participants and local experts. Participants worked in small teams of six to develop effective presentation skills and create teaching materials. Every effort was made to design diverse teams including participants from a variety of engineering disciplines and to help participants recognize the importance of developing and modeling collaborative skills. The local expert teams consisted of representatives from the College of Engineering and various engineering disciplines, the School of Education including curriculum and instruction and higher education departments, and the College of Letters and Science that incorporates other physical science units including chemistry, math, and physics. Industrial representatives will join the teams when possible.
Local experts within UW-Madison worked with the outside experts to learn more about the specific issues to use in their own classrooms and to share with other UW-Madison colleagues. They provided local leadership before, during, and after each of the three proposed summer programs. Their role is to 1) build a collaborative team of local experts with a special focus, 2) collect resources, and 3) facilitate small group discussions within the workshop. Before the program, they met to clarify their role and review and revise the evaluation and assessment plan. During the program, they attended specific workshops, facilitated small group discussions within the workshop, as needed, and met with the outside expert following the program to reflect and discuss next steps. Following the program, they met with all the local experts to 1) focus on a specific workshop for planning and development, 2) review assessments and evaluations, 3) review and revise workshop objectives, 4) design a learning module for future workshops including objectives, content, methodology, and hands-on activities, and 5) participate in electronic dialog with participants.
PROGRAM EVALUATION
Researchers from the UW's Learning through Evaluation, Adaptation, and Dissemination (LEAD) Center are in the process of conducting an on-going evaluation of the five-day program and its long-term effects on the participants. This paper, based on LEAD's initial report (Pfatteicher and Millar, December 1996), traces the first class of participants through the program and draws on a few, brief contacts in the first five months after the program. In spring 1997, LEAD has begun conducting telephone interviews with a subset of these participants to continue our follow-up.
The primary purpose of LEAD's evaluation is to provide the EESP with information that can be useful in planning improvements in and changes to the program. The value of third-party evaluation is that evaluators can come to the data with fewer biases and pre-conceived opinions about the subject under consideration -- and thus can obtain more objective results -- than can those being evaluated.
LEAD data collection methods are as open-ended and subject-responsive as feasible to ensure that the views and the experiences of the EESP participants, not the researchers, are reported. The primary sources used for this report are open-ended surveys, augmented with interviews and structured observations of participants during the five-day program. Open-ended survey data are half-way between qualitative case studies and statistical analysis, in that they produce more context-sensitive (and thus valid) constructs than scale data, and, being drawn from a large sample, are more reliable than qualitative analyses such as open-ended interviews. Likewise, analysis processes are fundamentally inductive to ensure that the participants' experiences shape the findings.
LEAD gathered two types of data prior to the start of the program: interviews with local experts, and participant surveys. The focus groups with local experts were intended to gather presenters' expectations for the program. The pre-program surveys consisted of nineteen questions, most of which asked participants about specific areas of their knowledge. Two of the questions from the pre-program survey addressed more general issues: why participants applied to the EESP program and what they hoped to gain from it. These pre-program surveys provide baseline information useful in comparison with the post-program surveys, and for planning and analysis of follow-up interviews nine months and three years after the program. It is difficult to judge accurately just how much useful information participants have taken away from the program since they have not had time to try any of the new techniques about which the experts spoke. In fact, most of the participants will not be in charge of a classroom for some months yet, and thus follow-up interviews will be necessary to determine with confidence which aspects of the program were most effective.
During the five days of the program, LEAD researchers gathered data on the effectiveness of the program in two ways. They asked participants to report their own views at the end of each day by completing a one-page survey assessing that day's agenda. They also attended most of the workshop ourselves in order to observe sessions and talk to experts and participants during break periods. The responses to the daily surveys have proved most useful to the organizers in determining the 1997 agenda.
Thus far, LEAD researchers have collected five types of post-program data: group agendas, concept maps, post-program surveys, unsolicited messages to the LEAD Center including a listserver, and email messages to experts. and are in the process of gathering a fifth type. On the last day of the program, the evaluators asked participants to self-select into six groups with approximately 5 members apiece and design an EESP agenda and concept map for year II . Evaluators asked participants to consider which sessions to retain, which to delete, and which to revise, all in light of next year's reduced budget for outside experts.
OUTCOMES
Having considered what the organizers, experts, and participants expected the program would do, what did experts and participants actually take away from the program? This is difficult to measure until more participants are in the classroom and have the opportunity to use (or not use) what they learned in the program. The LEAD report examines only what participants learned over the course of the five-day workshop. LEAD researchers are conducting interviews with participants in the spring 1997, which will afford an opportunity to re-visit the issues discussed here. This sections describes the effects on the experts, participants, and the longer-term effects.
Experts: LEAD researchers have not yet undertaken a systematic evaluation of the impact of the EESP on the local or national experts. From the research to date it is impossible to tell, then, whether the EESP has helped to foster a community of experts either at the UW or nationwide. LEAD researchers' informal contacts with the local experts suggests that some of them met new people through the workshop and have kept in touch. It would be interesting to know, however, whether more conversations about engineering education are taking place and whether such conversations have led any of the local experts to take actions of their own toward improving teaching and learning in the college of engineering. It may be possible during the Year 2 data gathering to find out more about networking among the local experts, but this is not a central focus of the current evaluation.
Participants: When participants arrived in town for the workshop, they found in their welcome packets a pre-program survey, which they completed prior to the start of the formal workshop sessions. On the last day of the workshop, they received a photocopy of their answers from before the survey and a blank copy of the survey (now labeled the post-program survey). They reviewed their answers from before the workshop and, if their answers would now be different, wrote the new answer on the post-program survey.
LEAD researchers analyzed these surveys and made four general observations. First, and perhaps least surprising, even when participants' answers changed from one survey to the next, participants seemed able to take away a limited number of ideas per session or topic. A second general observation (related to the first) from the pre- and post-program surveys is that few of the participants changed their answers dramatically; instead, they revised or refined their pre-program answers, frequently providing more supporting data on the post-program survey than they had prior to the program. A third, and perhaps the most important, general observation from the surveys is that at least some of the participants focused more on the effects of teaching. The fourth and final general observation from the pre- and post-program surveys is that by the end of the workshop participants had given substantial thought to the character of the institution or department they would like to join. They have gained an awareness and recognition that departments and schools have distinct personalities that a prospective employee ought to explore and consider.
A focus on the third general observation is noteworthy for this paper. This shift toward appreciating the impact of teaching appeared most clearly in participants' answers to the question of why students leave engineering and how to retain them. On the pre-program survey, most of the participants listed reasons having to do with the students themselves: students leave because they "cannot cope with the amount of work," are "not interested enough to work," lack "proper background in mathematics and basic sciences," or simply find the subject "too hard." As one participant explained, "Often they are discouraged (as well they should be) by poor grades in introductory courses." After the program, many of the participants had shifted the focus of their answers to the teachers. Many agreed with one participant who identified the culprit as "poor instruction, which yields: lack of mentoring, overburdening workload, [and] little insight into applications." Although on the pre-program survey only four participants identified poor teaching as a factor in students leaving engineering, fourteen noted on the post-program survey that improving teaching or increasing schools' support of teaching would help keep students in the field.
In a similar vein, when participants spoke of what characteristics make a faculty member an effective mentor, their post-program answers reflect an increased awareness of the scope of a professor's influence. There were few dramatically changed answers to this question, but six or seven of the participants' answers showed a slight shift toward characteristics outside of the classroom. In the most notable instance, one participant changed his pre-program answer from "good classroom lecturing capacity" to a post-program answer that also included "organized, sincere, and honest interactions with the students both in and outside the classroom."
Longer-Term Effects: Early indications from the follow-up interviews during spring, 1997 show that all of the participants who are in the classroom are changing their teaching as a result of EESP. Although there has been little opportunity to trace longer-term effects of the workshop, one participant did note on the listserver that she is beginning to use some of the program material:
I'm in the middle of preparing for fall classes and am trying to incorporate some of what we learned into my courses. Specifically I am going to try some different assessment strategies in a senior level air pollution control course. In addition to having three exams, I will be requiring a small group assessment project for each major area of study. The students will be able to choose the format of this assessment project. Thus some of the responsibility for demonstrating an understanding of the material will be given to the student. I will give them some examples of possible projects. My major worries are that I will have trouble uniformly assessing different formats and individual member of the groups.
SYNTHESIS BY THIRD-PARTY EVALUATORS
LEAD Center researchers provided synthesis of the evaluation data in three areas: goals and expectations, outcomes, and program content and structure. A brief summary of the synthesis follows.
Goals and expectations: Organizers, experts, and participants have general agreement on several of the goals of the program, but some substantial variation on a few other goals. They each expected the program to improve participants' preparation to teach undergraduates. There was less agreement on whether the program would "thereby, strengthen their skills for the competitive job market in higher education." The local experts seemed to agree that this would be a natural outcome of improved teaching skills, but few of the participants explicitly noted this on their surveys.
The local experts placed less emphasis on participants learning to "understand undergraduate students and especially appreciate their diversity in terms of cultural background, age, gender, [and] interests" than did the principal investigators, but both tended to agree that understanding the diversity of learning styles was an important goal of the program. Few of the program participants, however, placed any emphasis on diversity of any kind. It is possible that they came into the program taking such diversity as a given, since the participants themselves were an unusually diverse group.
The program leaders and the local experts both seemed to agree that participants should come away from the program committed to "future responsibilities for leadership in engineering education." Participants clearly wanted to become better teachers and better professors by attending the program, but it is unclear whether they began the workshop intending to learn how to be "leaders" in engineering education. On similar lines, the goal of helping participants to "develop confidence in becoming 'change agents"' was supported by a few local experts, but participants did not identify this as one of their goals prior to the workshop.
As for the more informal expectations of the program, the principal investigators and local experts strongly agree that EESP is not a cure-all, but an introduction to engineering education. Participants didn't address this issue explicitly, but this isn't surprising. Approximately a third of the participants wrote that they expected the program to "help" them in becoming better educators, and another third used language that suggested the program would "give them" a list of discrete tools or skills. None suggested that this program would provide all the answers, but most understood that any training in being a professor would be an improvement over what they had received in graduate school.
As for the EESP helping to form a community amongst the participants, the local experts seem in close agreement with the principal investigators on this, with both groups suggesting this as a hoped for, but not guaranteed outcome. By contrast, only one participant expected the program would help by encouraging "networking with colleagues." Eight others explicitly stated that they expected to benefit from "sharing ideas with other engineering educators," but none of these mentioned such contact continuing after the conference. Less than half of the local experts expected or hoped the program would have an effect on professors in Madison and, not at all surprisingly, participants did not see this as a goal. The fact that community-building was not a primary expectation of participants or experts does not indicate that such a community will not develop.
Whereas local experts described both information and skills they felt participants needed to learn, it is important to note that most of the participants listed types of information they expected to learn, rather than skills they hoped to acquire (although some were interested in information on skills). This contrast has significance for decisions about the format of the program. Information may be transmitted efficiently and effectively in a lecture format, for instance, but skills are better acquired in a hands-on format.
Outcomes: The value of the program outcomes must be calculated with regard to the goals of the program, which can be summarized as 1) making participants aware of the options, research, and resources available in engineering education, and 2) encouraging the participants to make others aware of the options, research, and resources available.
The participants, in general, seem to have come away from the program with increased awareness, but the extent of that awareness is unclear at this point. Given that most of the answers on the surveys did not change drastically during the course of the program, and that many of the pre-program answers were relatively sophisticated in their understanding of undergraduate engineering education, it would be difficult to argue that the participants were changed people by the end of the five-day workshop.
Early interviews suggest that several participants are attempting to be "change agents," that is they have begun to encourage others to participate in change and that more plan to do so in the future. This is encouraging since the post-program survey showed that the participants gave little indication of feeling that as a result of EESP they could be "leaders" or "change agents" in engineering education. The survey also indicated that when asked what efforts at an institutional level might help retention of students, one participant replied after the workshop that "getting this involved is still fuzzy to me." But as noted above, this is not surprising for individuals just entering the professoriate.
In fact, the most important aspect of the program may have been less an awareness of teaching approaches and techniques per se and more an awareness that there are a variety of institutional attitudes toward teaching. That is to say, by dint of their presence at the UW, the participants clearly learned that not all institutions support teaching to the same extent, and at least part of this knowledge likely came from participants' being able to compare their home institutions, where they learned next to nothing about teaching, with the UW (as represented by the EESP), where education is considered important and worthy of discussion and recognition.
Program Content and Structure: Overall, participants felt the program was a success. Most of their suggestions were couched in terms of improving an already successful program, rather than fixing substantial flaws.
The announcement materials seem to have been successful in attracting a group of talented, interested engineers who were predominantly female and included a high proportion of ethnic minorities. The speakers and topics were generally well-liked. Few comments suggested deleting speakers or sessions altogether; rather, they suggested revising the format to make the session more useful or interactive. Most participants wanted more interaction, and yet few could identify speakers or topics to delete from the program. In informal conversations during the program, a few of the participants said they would have been happy to attend a longer program if that would have allowed more discussion time without eliminating any topics. None of the participants explicitly mentioned the binder of materials, but many noted that they would refer back to their notes on sessions of particular interest or complexity. LEAD researchers believe the binder is likely to be an effective way to continue participants' interest after the program ends and are exploring this in the interviews this spring. Every participant interviewed this spring has described the finders as extremely useful. They refer to it often and some loan it to colleagues.
The Carnegie Mellon EESP required participants to read a section of their binders as "homework" each night of the workshop, to prepare for the following day's sessions. One likely drawback to this procedure is that many UW participants commented on how much they valued the chance to talk with each other in the evening, after the day's sessions ended. Another possibility would be to mail the binders to participants prior to the workshop and ask that they read the material before coming to town. However, it is questionable whether participants would do this reading or remember sufficient amounts of it to make the effort involved for the organizers worthwhile.
According to the LEAD evaluators, one of the most challenging aspects of the EESP is to spark sufficient interest among the participants in order to have a lasting impact on their careers. One way to re-spark conversation and interest would be to invite at least some of last year's participants to attend this year's program. A similar possibility would be to encourage several of last year's participants to give a presentation at a national conference such as FIE or ASEE.
NSF FEEDBACK
National Science Foundation support and feedback has been continual, thorough, and encouraging. Several NSF representatives participated in the program including John Prados, Program Director, Engineering, Education & Centers Division; Sue Kemnitzer, Deputy Division Director, EEC; and Marshall Lih, Division Director. They not only provided presentations to the participants, but they also interacted with participants on an informal level. Therefore, their perceptions of "what worked" and "what improvements would benefit participants" provided an important insight. Numerous interactions among NSF representatives and program organizers following the program led to the following changes for the 1997 EESP.
CHANGES FOR 1997 EESP, YEAR II
Given the feedback from the LEAD evaluation documents and discussions with NSF representatives and our local UW experts, the changes fall into these categories: fewer topics, but more in-depth; longer time with fewer experts; more information on academic jobs; more community-building activities; and better accommodations.
To have fewer, more in-depth topics, we are shifting to six outside experts from thirteen and expanding the time spent on topics from generally one to two hours to 'a half day or a whole day.' For example, on the first day, Don Woods will spend three-quarters of the day focusing on "Improving Teaching and Learning" and on the third day, James Stice will spend the whole day on "Designing Courses form Start to Finish."
To have longer time with fewer experts, we scheduled time for discussion throughout the program including a resource fair on one evening, panelists another evening, and longer breaks and meals.
To provide more information on academic jobs, we added an academic ladder panel discussion plus three presentations under the heading of "Understanding Academic Careers: How to Mentor and Be Mentored Successfully, How to Plan for the Tenure Process, and How to Put Together a Good Grant Proposal." In addition, an evening presentation will cover "Maneuvering through the Hiring Environment." We retained the popular panel titled, "From the Trenches: Reflections on Life as an Assistant Professor." Finally, we added an official block of time for participants to meet with faculty from specific disciplines and tour the departments.
To build more community among participants, we are coordinating more informal conversations and activities. The graduate student chapter of ASEE is assisting this effort. Finally, to improve accommodations, we are moving from the dormitories into private housing near the engineering campus. We have left two afternoons free and moved the panel presentations and resource fair into the evening for a more relaxed setting.
PROGRESS THROUGH PARTNERSHIPS
The Engineering Education Scholars Program is a partnership among the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the National Science Foundation, and all the institutions that sponsor the participants or are home to the nationally-recognized experts. Year two promises to be even more beneficial than year one. Why? Collaboration among all those involved and dissemination of program evaluations by the LEAD Center have led to challenging insights and revised program activities. As we continue to partner together toward the common goal of improving engineering education, we will see progress in integrating teaching and research.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We gratefully acknowledge the support from the National Science Foundation (grant EEC9633800) as well as the UW Graduate School. In addition, we acknowledge the work of Sarah Pfatteicher and Susan Millar, researchers in the UW-Madison, Learning through Evaluation, Adaptation and Dissemination (LEAD) Center. We note that their report, which is the primary source for this paper, presents formative/work-in-progress evaluation based on data collected and analyzed by their third-party research unit.
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