Future Faculty Workshop: Grooming Diverse Leaders for the Future, Summers of 2016-2018

University Of Delaware, Newark DE

Investigators

Abstract

NON-TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION: A major challenge to American technological and societal advancement is to effectively harness our diverse talent and human resources in science and engineering. Without developing a future generation of talented individuals from a range of social, economic, and racial backgrounds and genders, the United States will become less technologically competitive. Despite the numerous activities that attempt to address this issue, the continued and disproportionally low engagement of underrepresented groups remains a major hurdle. In this project, a series of two-day Future Faculty Workshops (FFWs) have been created to better enable underrepresented scientists (minorities, women, persons with disabilities, first-generation college students, etc.) to compete for, and obtain, faculty positions in areas related to Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Biomaterials, Polymer Science and Soft Materials Physics. The FFW is tackling two factors that are key to adding academic diversity. First, the FFW is designed to provide information and intellectual content to reduce the knowledge gap and improve confidence in the journey toward professorship in an active-learning and highly-engaging workshop environment. Second, sustainable and highly productive mentor-mentee and mentee-mentee networks are formed by pairing students/postdoctoral associates with active and invested research mentors to develop career-long relationships. The outcome-based FFW framework, as well as the detailed assessment protocols and metrics, are expected to serve as a blueprint for subsequent efforts and best practices in all areas of science and engineering. As a long-term benefit, the act of increasing the proportion of underrepresented groups in the science and engineering academic realm is one of the most transformational and effective mechanisms for enhancing overall diversity in the future science and engineering workforce. TECHNICAL DETAILS: Three two-day Future Faculty Workshops (one each summer) are designed to mentor a diverse cadre of senior graduate students and postdoctoral researchers with an interest in materials science and engineering, specifically soft materials and biomaterials. A key goal of the workshops is to better enable underrepresented scientists (minorities, women, first-generation college students, persons with disabilities, etc.) to compete for, and obtain, assistant professor faculty positions in soft materials research. Additionally, the workshops are expected to serve as a blueprint for subsequent efforts in all areas of materials science and engineering. This effort is necessary because increasing the proportion of underrepresented groups in the science and engineering academic realm is one of the most effective mechanisms for enhancing overall diversity in the future science and engineering workforce. Thus, the workshops herein address several necessary aspects on the road toward assistant professorship, such as creating long-term and sustainable mentor networks, disseminating the "written" and "unwritten" rules of the professorship process, providing feedback on mentee proposed research topics, and instilling confidence in navigating the application process. Hosting approximately 45-50 mentees and 15-20 mentors per summer, the workshops provide the mentees with information on the path to academia through (i) significant discussion-based interactions describing the steps along the academic pathway, (ii) select faculty research lectures in emerging areas of interdisciplinary research, (iii) numerous networking sessions, and (iv) active-learning (student/postdoctoral associate-led) presentations and role-playing of application, interview, and workplace scenarios. A logic model platform, pre- and post-workshop surveys, longer-term follow-up questionnaires, and independent workshop observers add to the dynamic and adaptable framework of the workshops and permit detailed assessment and refinement during the 3-year period and beyond.