Brain surgeons, electricians, accountants, chemical engineers, and members of all other skilled professions, have one thing in common: they all received training before they were allowed to practice professionally. All but one skilled profession, that is—being a college faculty member. Graduate school prepares future faculty members to work on research projects someone else defined; however, it generally does not prepare most of them to plan research independently, get it funded, recruit good graduate students in competition with more experienced colleagues, set up a lab, build a research team, publish in top journals, plan courses, design and deliver effective instruction, make up good assignments and tests, and deal with dozens of research, teaching, and time management crises that routinely occur in the lives of all faculty members.
People are not born knowing all those things, and trial-and-error is not an efficient way to learn them. The work of psychologist Robert Boice (see reference below) has shown that most new faculty members take four to five years to become as productive in research and effective in teaching as they need to be to meet their institutions’ standards for tenure and promotion. About 5%, however (“quick starters”) do it in one to two years. Boice also showed that the 95% routinely make certain mistakes that limit their productivity and effectiveness and that the mistakes are avoidable. With the proper guidance, new faculty members can be turned into quick starters.
That possibility is just one of several important benefits of providing new faculty members with training and mentoring in teaching. It can be difficult to persuade experienced professors that they have been using ineffective teaching strategies throughout their careers and they will need to change their approach to equip their students with the knowledge and skills we all want them to have. Most new faculty members, on the other hand, know that they don’t really know how to teach–especially when they run into serious problems in their first few weeks. They are consequently receptive to suggestions early in their careers, and are much more likely than their more experienced colleagues to become effective teachers in a relatively short period of time. In addition, if the training helps them avoid many of the difficulties most new teachers commonly experience, it can also give them more time and energy to start building their research programs and to attend to their personal health and well-being.
This post briefly outlines measures that deans, department heads, and senior faculty members can take to help new STEM faculty members reach quick-starter status, and points to online resources that provide details on the design and implementation of the measures.
- Boice, R. (2000). Advice for new faculty members. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. A practical book for new faculty members based on Boice’s experience with hundreds of them. Sections deal with teaching, research, and fitting into the university culture.
- Brent, R. & Felder, R.M. (1998). The new faculty member. Chemical Engineering Education, 32(3), 46-47. Summary of Boice’s description of quick starters and what they do that makes them successful.
New faculty orientation and ongoing faculty development
Two general approaches to new faculty orientation are campus-wide and discipline-specific workshops. Discipline-specific programs for STEM faculty members are recommended because (unlike most campus-wide programs) they can provide extensive coverage of teaching and research methods and illustrate all recommended methods with STEM-related examples. As a consequence, they tend to get much better attendance and reception from STEM faculty than campus-wide programs generally experience.
- Brent, R. & Felder, R.M. (2012). Just-in-time vs. just-in-case. Chemical Engineering Education, 46(2), 87-88. Advantages of discipline-specific faculty development and an overview of the New Faculty Orientation Workshop given for the past two decades to the Colleges of Engineering and Sciences at North Carolina State University.
- Brent, R. & Felder, R.M. (1998). Effective teaching workshops for engineering and science faculties. ICED (The International Consortium for Educational Development in Higher Education) Second International Conference, April 19-22. Nine suggestions for organizing and delivering teaching workshops for faculty in STEM disciplines.
- Felder, R.M.; Brent, R.; & Prince, M.J. (2011). Engineering instructional development: Programs, best practices, and recommendations. Journal of Engineering Education, 100(1), 89-122. Survey of the content and structures of engineering instructional development programs around the world, and a framework for designing and delivering effective programs for engineering faculty. Includes options for workshop content (p. 94 and 96), descriptions of alternative program structures (pp. 98-100), pros and cons of campus-wide and discipline-specific programs (p.102), information on how to evaluate faculty development programs (pp. 104-107), and suggestions for making programs effective (pp. 107-111) and for developing a campus culture that supports the programs (pp.111).
Mentoring New Faculty
Mentoring programs for new faculty members in their home departments effectively complement faculty development programs at the school, college, and university levels. There are many different mentoring models, all of which may involve experienced faculty members helping their new faculty colleagues succeed in teaching, research, learning about and integrating into their campus cultures, and achieving a healthy work-life balance.
- Columbia University, Office of the Provost. (2016). Guide to best practices in faculty mentoring. A wealth of strategies for setting up a faculty mentoring program and best practices for mentoring in research and teaching.
- Felder, R.M. [Blog]. Get new instructors off to a great start with mentoring. Outline of how a teaching mentorship might function.
- Bullard, L.G. & Felder, R.M. (2003). Mentoring: A personal perspective. College Teaching, 51(2), 66-69. Description of a teaching mentorship from the perspectives of the mentor and the mentee.
We’d love to hear about efforts to help new faculty on your campus get off to a good start. Leave comments to share your ideas!
