With the growth of academic programs to include online at XXXX and coupled with the requirement to provide full benefits to adjunct faculty who are teaching more than 9 credit hours in a semester, XXXX, a primarily teaching focused school, has begun to shift from a nearly complete tenure track faculty to a faculty model with 25 percent of the faculty non-tenure track. This change in faculty structure has also been driven by the State controlling through their approval each year of the number of full time equivalents (FTE) lines available.
Normally limited faculty development, presentation, and small research grants were available to the tenure track faculty, but now some schools at XXXX are providing these funds to non-tenure track faculty which not only improves the potential for a non-tenured track faculty moving into a tenure track line in the future and increases the overall faculty scholarship production, but enhances the quality of non-tenured track faculty activities as well as their future transportability to another opportunity; thereby enhancing the entire program. The obvious downside is the spreading of already limited faculty development funds over a larger population.
The School of Engineering at XXXX will outline its faculty development programs as well as co-teaching models that are producing a more cohesive department (scholarship increased production). Faculty surveys, student survey and comments, and non-tenure track faculty changes will be presented, analyzed, and best practices presented based on the data.
Ron Welch (P.E.) received his B.S. degree in Engineering Mechanics from the United States Military Academy in 1982. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in 1990 and 1999, respectively. He taught at The United States Military Academy during his 25 year military career. After retiring form the military he has taught at the University of Texas at Tyler and The Citadel, where he was the Dean of Engineering for 10 years.
Robert Rabb is the associate dean for education in the College of Engineering at Penn State. He previously served as a professor and the Mechanical Engineering Department Chair at The Citadel. He previously taught mechanical engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the United Military Academy and his M.S. and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. His research and teaching interests are in mechatronics, regenerative power, and multidisciplinary engineering.
Dr. Kevin Bower is the D. Graham Copland Professor of Civil Engineering and Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The Citadel, Charleston, South Carolina. Dr. Bower’s research into teaching and learning forces on improving active learning environments and the development of principled leaders attributes in engineering students.
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