EAGER: Supporting Faculty Early Career Development in Engineering Education Research

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

Despite the establishment of engineering education research as a field of inquiry in the last three decades, the social infrastructure available to engineering education researchers is not yet robust enough to consistently support the development of early career faculty across different types of appointments that exist within departments, as faculty in traditional engineering disciplines, or as a part of centers. The purpose of this early-concept project is to explore the development of an engineering education specific community to support early career faculty in engineering education. This project focuses on the National Science Foundation's CAREER award as a particular indicator of early success in engineering education. Using an untested approach to infrastructure development for early engineering education researchers, the project applies theories from organizational change literature in order to equitably provide CAREER application resources and support to early career engineering education researchers throughout the United States. Using collaborative inquiry, we will build a base of existing CAREER awardees and explore particular advice, resources, and trends that would be important to consider and include in developing an early CAREER mentor network. This first phase will generate engineering education specific (as opposed to general CAREER application advice that many universities provide) resources that can be contributed to a change network. The second, and most intensive phase of this project, focuses on extending the current network to provide these EER specific resources equitable to early career engineering education faculty. This effort addresses the concerns around differential faculty support within different types of appointments and provides leadership development to support engineering education faculty's movement into core positions with the community. This work provides support and resources for faculty who are often "lone wolves" or otherwise unsupported in engineering education researchers at their institutions. These individuals play an important role in the engineering education research community and equitable access to resources for CAREER application development provides not only strong development for researchers at engineering departments and centers but also to those who connect into more traditional engineering spaces. By expanding who has access to engineering education research resources and support, we can diversify and improve the quality of CAREER applications. Finally, a focus on long-term sustainability will embed the changes made by building this much needed infrastructure to assist engineering education researchers nationwide and create lasting change in engineering education. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.