Information Technology (IT) is an emerging discipline that is well served by faculty members with recent industry experience. Unfortunately, hiring individuals with recent experience can lead to instructors who need help integrating into an academic environment. At the United States Military Academy, our faculty recruiting model results in a turnover of approximately 20% every year. Our challenge is to provide a top notch development program in order to rapidly inculcate the new faculty with an IT appropriate pedagogical focus. This paper describes the details of our faculty development program. The formal developmental process for new instructors begins with an intensive six week summer workshop and continues throughout their time at the Military Academy. During the academic year, mentor and peer classroom visitations provide a unique opportunity for personal pedagogical growth, and periodic seminars and invited speakers help maintain technical currency. At a higher level, our Center for Teaching Excellence publishes a monthly newsletter, coordinates seminars, offers a multi-year developmental program, and presents an annual award for teaching innovation. In addition to internal programs, members of the faculty are provided support and encouragement to attend conferences and remain active in the larger IT community. The paper concludes by describing our faculty evaluation processes, which are used to assess and then improve the development program.

The United States Military Academy (USMA) has had tremendous success teaching introductory computing and problem solving to over 1,100 first-year students. USMA requires all firstyear students to take CS105, Introduction to Computing, which is a broad course that both introduces computing and emphasizes problem solving using an Engineering Design Method. While this is not a CSI course, we are using Ada programming as the principal tool to teach Engineering Design. The simplicity of the Ada 95 syntax allows the student to focus on the concepts of sequence, selection, and iteration, while various language features help bring the student to a concrete understanding of the distinct phases of an Engineering Design Method.

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