Guidance for Graduate Students, Post Docs and Early Career Faculty

Karl A. Smith

University of Minnesotaksmith@umn.edu

Introductory Session

Nanyang Business SchoolOctober 2012

Tentative Schedule• Preparing for the Professoriate• Introduction to Cooperative Learning and

Foundations of Design of High Performance Team Learning Environments

• Pedagogies of Engagement: Cooperative Learning and Challenge-Based Learning

• Preparing and Supporting Students to Work in Teams in NTU Learning Environments

• Assessing Students in Cooperative Team-Based Learning

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Participant Learning Goals (Objectives)

• Summarize strategies for preparing for the professoriate• Describe key features of Cooperative Learning• Explain rationale for Pedagogies of Engagement, especially

Cooperative Learning & Challenge Based Learning• Describe key features of the Understanding by Design and How People

Learn • Describe models for processing and monitoring team work • Apply cooperative learning to classroom practice• Apply measures of individual learning in cooperative learning

(assurance of learning that demonstrates both individual and group accountability for the task output)

• Identify connections between cooperative learning and desired outcomes of courses and programs

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Two Responsibilities

• Make Sure You Learn Something Useful And Interesting From Session(s)

• Make Sure Everyone In The Session(s) Learns Something Useful And Interesting

Reflection and Dialogue• Individually reflect on interest in teaching and an

academic career and what you’d like to get out of the workshop. Write for about 1 minute.

• Discuss with your neighbor for about 3 minutes– Describe your interests & goals for the workshop.

Make sure each person talks– Select some aspects that you would like to present to

the whole group if you are randomly selected• Whole group discussion

Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate Ernest L. Boyer

• The Scholarship of Discovery, research that increases the storehouse of new knowledge within the disciplines;

• The Scholarship of Integration, including efforts by faculty to explore the connectedness of knowledge within and across disciplines, and thereby bring new insights to original research;

• The Scholarship of Application, which leads faculty to explore how knowledge can be applied to consequential problems in service to the community and society; and

• The Scholarship of Teaching, which views teaching not as a routine task, but as perhaps the highest form of scholarly enterprise, involving the constant interplay of teaching and learning.

Levels of Education Inquiry

Source: Streveler, R., Borrego, M. and Smith, K.A. 2007. Moving from the “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” to “Educational Research:” An Example from Engineering. Improve the Academy, Vol. 25, 139-149.

• Level 0 Teacher– Teach as taught

• Level 1 Effective Teacher– Teach using accepted teaching theories and practices

• Level 2 Scholarly Teacher– Assesses performance and makes improvements

• Level 3 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning– Engages in educational experimentation, shares results

• Level 4 Discipline Based Education Researcher– Conducts educational research, publishes archival papers

Levels of Inquiry

• Level 1: Excellent teaching– Involves the use of good content and teaching

and assessing methods• Level 2: Scholarly Teaching

– Involves good content and methods and classroom assessment and evidence gathering, informed by best practice and best knowledge, inviting of collaboration and review.

Levels of Inquiry (cont’d)• Level 3: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

– The Instructor (a) Is aware of modern pedagogical developments and incorporates them in his/her teaching where appropriate, and (b) Reflects on, assesses, and attempts to improve his/her teaching (classroom research)

– Is public and open to critique and evaluation, is in a form that others can build on, involves question-asking, inquiry and investigation, particularly about student learning.

The Basic Features of Scholarly and Professional Work

• The activity requires a high level of discipline- related expertise.

• The activity breaks new ground, is innovative.• The activity can be replicated or elaborated.• The work and its results can be documented.• The work and its results can be peer-reviewed.• The activity has significance or impact.

Adapted from: Diamond R. & Adam, B. 1993. Recognizing faculty work: Reward systems for the year 2000. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Basic Features of Professional and Scholarly Work

• It requires a high level of discipline-related expertise • It is conducted in a scholarly manner with clear goals,

adequate preparation, and appropriate methodology • The work and its results are appropriately and effectively

documented and disseminated. This reporting should include a reflective critique that addresses the significance of the work, the process that was used, and what was learned.

• It has significance beyond the individual context. • It breaks new ground or is innovative.• It can be replicated or elaborated on.• The work both process and product or result is reviewed

and judged to be meritorious and significant by a panel of ones peers.

Bob Diamond  (2002)

What Resources are Available? • Advisors and Colleagues• Center for Teaching and Learning Services• Department Chair/Head• Senior Colleagues• Professional Organizations - Disciplinary• Books

New Professor Handbooks• Davidson, Cliff I. & Ambrose,

Susan A. 1994. The new professor’s handbook: A guide to teaching and research in engineering and science. Bolton: Anker.

• Reis, Richard M. 1997. Tomorrow’s professor: Preparing for academic careers in science and engineering. New York: IEEE.

New Professor Handbooks• Wankat, Phillip C.

2002. The effective, efficient professor: Teaching, scholarship and service. Boston: Allyn and Bacon

Tips for Busy New Professors

Phil WankatChE & ENE, Purdue University

Submitted toASEE IL-IN Section, April 2010

Clarify Your Vision• Decide what goals are important to you

– Promotion & Tenure– Significant other– Family: When to have a baby?– Starting a company– Becoming rich or famous– Running marathon, golf, fishing, reading?

• Need to prioritize and balance• Spend time every week on important goals.

Promotion/Tenure Tips• Obtain & study the written rules.• Understand the procedure and timing.• Discuss unwritten requirements with

knowledgeable professors – Preferably both inside & outside department– Understand impact & potential

• Develop goals that will satisfy promotion & tenure committees.

• Spend time every week on these goals.

Promotion & Tenure Requirements• Research Universities:

– Money! At least enough to support research– Quality Publications, good journals. Goal: Impact!– Good teaching (great helps on margin)– Good citizen and service (may include advising)

• Undergraduate Institutions:– Good to great teaching. Goal: Impact!– Advising, service and citizenship– Involve UG in research & Money to support research

Efficiency Tips• Never enough time. Need time management:

– Set Goals & Prioritize – Use To-Do list. Include:• goals for P&T committee• your own work goals• high-priority non-work items

– Delegate work• Give clear assignments & responsibility for details• Check on progress and provide feedback• Give credit

– Learn to say no pleasantly– Maximum productivity: about 55 hours work/week.

Personal & Family Time

• Reserve time for yourself & your family.– Work at most 6 days/week on regular basis– Spend time with family daily– On trips, call home every day– Take short vacations.

• Develop flow activity - golf, cooking, etc.• Stress point – balancing work & family

– All studies: balancing harder for women.

What Leads to Student Learning

1. Involve the students2. Students actively processing material3. Positive expectations4. Practice – reflection – feedback, and

repeat5. Time on task – Deliberate practice6. Challenged, yet successful7. Enthusiastic, engaging teacher.

Organizing Lectures

• Lecture Constraint: Attention span of students.• Use mini-lectures with active learning breaks. • Mini-lectures:

– Opener & connector– Main Body– Brief Summary & connector.

• Control content tyranny – relaxing in class is more important than covering everything.

• Breaks: Introductions, brainstorming, stretch/restroom, one-minute quiz (demonstrated later), small group discussions, demos, & whatever else will make the students be active.

Building Lectures

• Build a lecture like a house:– Foundation, frame, outer walls & roof first, then

finishing touches room by room.• Houses and lectures are not built in one day.• Start with 10 to 15 minutes on the foundation and

frame – add more later.• Max of 2 hrs prep time/50 minute lecture

(assuming you know the material).• Relaxing & being human is more important than

covering everything – avoid content tyranny.

Active Learning

• Since it is what students do that leads to learning, teaching methods that force students to be active can be very effective.

• Cooperative groups• Project & problem based learning (PBL)• Hands-on and computer simulation labs• Mastery learning• Since these methods are unfamiliar & can fail

– Get assistance in starting– Start slowly (e.g., as part of a lecture class)

Teaching Tips• Write and share your course objectives.

– Students are more likely to learn what you want them to if they know what that is.

• Come to class early and stay late– Easiest time for students to talk to you.

• Solve tests before you hand them out• Attend at least one teaching workshop• After 1st test, ask what will help students learn.• Lecture less! Use active learning methods.• Remember: What students do is more important than

what you do.

Research Tips• Role of research advisor

– Maintain professional relationship with students– Obtaining $ and budgeting– Use your start-up $ for maximum impact– Attend a Proposal Writing Workshop

• Balance research projects:– Continuation PhD/postdoc & new research– Working with your own grad students &

collaborating with other profs & research alone• Don’t expect grad students to get you promoted

– Low risk & high risk– Fast pub/low impact & slow pub/high impact

Research: How much money?

• Assume: – average one Ph.D./year at steady state. – Ph.Ds graduate in 4 (or 5) years (rapid).– one terminal MS every 2 years.– Thus, group is 5 (or 6) students (moderate size).– 1 grad student (incl. equipment, supplies, & overhead)

costs $40(to 75) K/yr (reasonable).– PI: 2 months summer plus 10%AY (& overhead!)

• Estimate: ~$250,000 - $500,000/year

Questions• Move into small groups & introduce yourself.• On 3x5 card write one or two questions about

“Tips for Busy New Professors” that the group agrees are good questions.

• Turn in the cards. • I will comment on cards in the order received.• This is called a “one-minute quiz” – it is useful in

classes, and as a backup if you run out of lecture material.

ResourcesTeaching Engineering, free at: https://engineering.purdue.edu/ChE/AboutUs/Publications/TeachingEng/index.html

Wankat, The Effective, Efficient Teacher, Allyn & Bacon, 2002

Reis, Tomorrow’s Professor, IEEE, 1997.

Monosson, Motherhood, The Elephant in the Laboratory: Women Scientists Speak Out, Cornell Univ Press, 2008.

Diamond, Preparing for Promotion, Tenure, and Annual Review. A Faculty Guide, Anker Pub. Co., 2004.

Burroughs Wellcome Fund & Howard Hughes Medical Instit., Making the Right Moves. A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty, 2006. http://www.hhmi.org/labmanagement

Promotion and Tenure Guides

• Diamond, Robert M. 2004. Preparing for promotion and tenure review: A faculty guide, 2nd Ed. Bolton: Anker

• Diamond, Robert M. 2002. Serving on promotion and tenure committees: A faculty guide, 2nd Ed. Bolton: Anker.

Principles of Good Practice: Supporting Early-Career FacultyMary Deane Sorcinelli

Improving Tenure Process1. Good practice communicates expectations for performance2. Good practice gives feedback on progress3. Good practice enhances collegial review processes4. Good practice creates flexible timelines for tenure

Encouraging Collegial Relations5. Good practice encourages mentoring by senior faculty6. Good practice extends mentoring and feedback to graduate students

who aspire to be faculty members7. Good practice recognizes the department chair as a career sponsor

Easing Stresses of Time and Balance8. Good practice supports teaching, particularly at the undergraduate

level9. Good practice supports scholarly development10.Good practice fosters a balance between professional and personal life

Paradise Lost: How the Academy Converts Enthusiastic Recruits into Early-Career Doubters

Cathy A. Trower, Ann E. Austin & Mary Deane SorcinelliAAHE Bulletin, May 2001

What We Can Do?1. Provide consistency, clarity, and communication of reasonable

performance expectations (throughout graduate school and the probationary years).

2. Ensure formal orientation, mentoring, and feedback.3. Offer flexibility and choice, and help scholars understand various

career tracks (Ideally, we need to legitimize those tracks outside of the tenure system).

4. Afford support for ongoing self-reflection and dialogue with colleagues about the kind of work and life we want to have.

Heeding New Voices: Academic Careers for a New Generation

R. Eugene Rice, Mary Deane Sorcinelli andAnn E. Austin. AAHE Inquiry #7, 2000

Three core, consistent, and interwoven concerns on the minds of early-career faculty:

1. Lack of a comprehensible tenure system2. Lack of community3. Lack of an integrated life

Additional References• Boyer, Ernest L. 1990. Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities for the

professoriate. Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

• Diamond, R., “The Mission-Driven Faculty Reward System,” in R.M. Diamond, Ed., Field Guide to Academic Leadership, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002

• Diamond R. & Adam, B. 1993. Recognizing faculty work: Reward systems for the year 2000. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

• Shulman, Lee S. 1999. Taking learning seriously. Change, 31 (4), 11-17.• Smith, Karl A. 2000. Guidance for new faculty (and students). Journal of

Engineering Education, 89 (1), 3-6.• Wankat, P.C., Felder, R.M., Smith, K.A. and Oreovicz, F. 2001. The

scholarship of teaching and learning in engineering. In Huber, M.T & Morreale, S. (Eds.), Disciplinary styles in the scholarship of teaching and learning: A conversation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.