Session M4E
Work in Progress - Developing a Certificate Program for Engineering Faculty as Leaders of Academic Change Elizabeth T. Cady, Norman L. Fortenberry, Beverly Davenport Sypher, Kamyar Haghighi, Steven R. Abel, Monica F. Cox, Teri Reed-Rhoads, Brenda Berkelaar
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected].
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected] Abstract - There is agreement on the need for change in engineering education, but lacking are the motivation, knowledge, or skills to effect change. With that in mind, we held a workshop in June 2009 that sought to engage faculty members who are change leaders. Over the twoday workshop, we solicited their views on departmental and institutional challenges, the knowledge, skills an abilities (KSAs) necessary for implementing academic change, and best practices for motivating engineering faculty to seek opportunities to acquire the necessary KSAs. We expected participants to identify and mentor change leaders on their home campuses. Following the workshop, we translated the participants’ views on the structure and content of programs they felt will be most successful into a program in academic change leadership. This paper describes how we distilled tacit and explicit knowledge from change leaders and leveraged that distillation to advance on–campus change as well as initiate the preparation of expanded cadres of change leaders. The information presented stemmed from discussions with engineering faculty who have implemented change on their campuses and includes lessons from their experiences and perceptions of the challenges they face. Index Terms – academic change, leadership program development, change leaders, engineering faculty. INTRODUCTION Although the engineering community agrees on the need for all-encompassing reforms in engineering education, little has changed in either the substance or the organization of engineering instruction for undergraduate students. This inertia stems from several obstacles, both institutional and individual. Despite agreement on the need for change, what appears to be lacking are the motivation, knowledge, or skills to effect change. Prior collaborative work by the Center for the Advancement of Scholarship in Engineering Education (CASEE) of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the American Sociological Association (ASA) resulted in a monograph [1] explaining ways to increase the motivation for change by individual
faculty, but questions remain as to how best provide potential change agents with the necessary skills and knowledge to actually implement change. A key issue in driving academic change is embedded in an observation by Fisher, Fairweather, and Amey [2]: An essential part of [systemic reform in undergraduate engineering education] is moving the focus from individual faculty interest, motivation, and activity to collective ownership and understanding of the reform efforts. . . . Ultimately, successful reform requires re-orienting the roles of faculty members, department chairs, and deans to achieve both individual and collective success. Tobias [3] frames the issue even more starkly, “The process of transforming innovation into change . . . of getting teachers to accept the findings of educational research . . . is essentially a political process. . . . Many educational reformers—scientists in particular—fail to acknowledge how political this process is and—even when they do—don't have the diplomatic skills (or the stomach) to see it through.” We sought to identify effective means to develop these diplomatic skills within engineering faculty, to imbue them with the confidence to use them, and to heighten their awareness of the challenges that call for their use. CURRENT PROJECT With that in mind, CASEE and Purdue University’s Butler Center for Leadership Excellence and the Purdue University Department of Engineering Education held a workshop in June 2009 that sought to engage faculty members who have implemented change on their respective campuses and who seek leadership preparation for meeting the challenges of the future. Over the course of the two-day workshop, we synthesized their knowledge about identifying and implementing change on campus as well as encouraged them to become change leaders and help develop the leadership potential of others on their home campuses. Following the workshop, we began to translate the knowledge gained to a change-focused academic leadership program. We sought input on the potential effectiveness
978-1-4244-4714-5/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX 39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference M4E-1
Session M4E and sustainability of different models of developing future leaders of academic change. We then identified likely candidates from the engineering education community at large for participation in the type of program deemed most effective. Actually offering the leadership program is beyond the scope of our current support. By pursuing this effort through a collaborative workshop, we also engaged in building connections among stakeholder communities who will collectively contribute to the measurable project outcomes: • Enumeration of target faculty demographics and listing of key motivational factors, • Listing of key academic change leadership skills to be acquired and identification of preferred educational delivery options with a discussion of the relative merits of each, • Development of a detailed curriculum and delivery method for an effective and sustainable post-graduate program (e.g. certificate, fellowship, or other) in Academic Change Leadership • Feedback from engineering faculty and administrators on how well the proposed leadership program might meet their needs. There are many alternative mechanisms by which we might have sought to understand how to provide change agents with the knowledge and skills to effectively implement change processes. However, we believed a workshop format would be most effective in advancing our aims by allowing us to actively engage key leaders in engineering education in achieving the overall workshop goals while also reinforcing their understanding and commitment to faculty leadership development. Moreover, we equipped a cadre of engineering faculty leaders to develop the leadership abilities of engineering colleagues on their own campuses. Workshop attendees completed a pre- and post-survey to gauge their opinions and knowledge of the process of academic change as well as opinions on the benefit of leadership development focused on academic change. They also described what they planned to contribute to the workshop and described what they think their best contribution to the workshop was. There were four goals of the proposed workshop as well as activities prior to and subsequent to its occurrence: Goal 1: Catalyze knowledgeable faculty to engage in change leadership activities on their individual campuses, Goal 2: Convene knowledgeable engineering faculty and administrators in a structured two-day workshop format to distill and synthesize their tacit and explicit knowledge about how to identify and implement needed campus change processes, Goal 3: Translate the distilled change leadership knowledge and skills into a post-graduate leadership development program focused on academic change; and Goal 4: Through identification and implementation of appropriate mechanisms, encourage engineering faculty to
participate in a post-graduate program to develop in academic change leadership. This session will describe how we distilled tacit and explicit knowledge from change leaders and leveraged that distillation to advance on–campus change and initiate the preparation of expanded cadres of change leaders. The information presented stems from discussions with engineering faculty who have implemented change on their campuses and includes lessons from their experiences and projections about the challenges they face in implementing future changes. This includes knowledge about (a) challenges facing engineering educators, (b) leadership skills, knowledge, and behaviors needed to surmount the challenges and effect change, and (c) ideas for identifying and motivating likely faculty change agents so the knowledge gained in the workshop will be shared on each of the workshop attendee’s respective campuses. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation (DUE-0814328). REFERENCES [1]
[2] [3]
Spalter-Roth, R., Fortenberry, N.L., & Lovitts, B. (2006). The acceptance and diffusion of innovation: A cross-curricula perspective on instructional and curricular change in engineering. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. Fisher, P.D., Fairweather, J.S., & Amey, M.J. (2002) Proceedings of the 2002 ASEE/SEFI/TUB colloquium. Washington, DC: American Society for Engineering Education. Tobias, S. (1992) "Science education reform." American Association for Higher Education, 12-19.
AUTHOR INFORMATION Elizabeth T. Cady, Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education,
[email protected] Norman L. Fortenberry, Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education,
[email protected] Beverly Davenport Sypher, Butler Center for Leadership Excellence, Purdue University,
[email protected] Kamyar Haghighi, Department of Engineering Education, Purdue University,
[email protected] Steven R. Abel, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Purdue University,
[email protected] Monica F. Cox, Department of Engineering Education, Purdue University,
[email protected] Teri Reed-Rhoads, Department of Engineering Education, Purdue University,
[email protected] Brenda Berkelaar, Department of Communication, Purdue University,
[email protected]
978-1-4244-4714-5/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX 39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference M4E-2
