Engineering faculty are faced with a variety of challenges ranging from teaching responsibilities, navigating research, and negotiating service demands. Due to the nature of the emerging field of engineering education and the emphasis on education within the ASEE community, there is a need to develop methods to facilitate cross-institutional mentoring. While many institutions offer formal mentoring in some capacity, there are limitations and challenges associated with these support structures. Some common challenges are scheduling a time to meet, navigating institutional power dynamics, and identifying individuals with shared interests and goals. This work proposes best practices for the development of an innovative peer mentoring structure that accounts for shared commitment to the advancement of engineering education.
This paper will provide insight for engineering education faculty who are currently transitioning into or are planning to pursue a career in academia in the future. We will describe a framework to create a virtual community for peer mentoring. The value of a virtual peer mentoring community is that it can provide support that may not be available within one’s institution and it minimizes the negative impacts that may be associated with institutional power dynamics. The best practices that we will describe are informed by six early career engineering education faculty that developed and participated in a virtual community over the last two years. We will describe best practices in relation to identifying a shared vision, developing possible tangible outcomes, writing operating procedures for the group, selecting an appropriate platform for communication, and facilitating reflection and changes to practice.
Courtney is a Research Assistant Professor and Lecturer in the College of Engineering Honors Program at the University of Tennessee. She completed her Ph.D. in Engineering & Science Education at Clemson University. Prior to her Ph.D. work, she received her B.S. in Bioengineering at Clemson University and her M.S. in Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University. Courtney’s research interests include epistemic cognition in the context of problem solving, researcher identity, and mixed methods.
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4346-8140
University of North Carolina, Charlotte
[biography]
Courtney S. Smith, PhD is a Teaching Associate Professor at UNC Charlotte. Her research interests span the mentoring experiences of African American women in engineering, minority recruitment and retention, and best practices for
Dr. Walter Lee is an associate professor in the Department of Engineering Education and the director for research at the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED), both at Virginia Tech.
Dr. Bodnar is an Associate Professor in the Experiential Engineering Education Department at Rowan University. Her research interests relate to the incorporation of active learning techniques such as game-based learning in undergraduate classes as well as innovation and entrepreneurship.
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4988-361X
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
[biography]
As an associate professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Systems Engineering Program at Cornell University, Dr. Alexandra Coso Strong works and teaches at the intersection of engineering education, faculty development, and complex systems design. She joined Cornell University after co-founding the School of Universal Computing, Construction and Engineering Education at Florida International University (FIU). As an assistant professor at FIU, she co-developed two degree programs, a Ph.D. in Engineering and Computing Education and a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Engineering. Prior to working at FIU, Alexandra served as an Assistant Professor of Systems Design and Engineering at Olin College. Alexandra completed her graduate degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech (PhD) and Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia (UVa).
Erin is a Research Assistant Professor and Lecturer in the Engineering Fundamentals Program at the University of Tennessee. She completed a postdoctoral/ lecturer position split between the General Engineering program and the Engineering & Science Education Department and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Clemson University. Erin’s research interests include preparing students for their sophomore year, minority student engineering identity development, and providing mentoring relationships to help foster student growth and success.
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