Faculty development in information technology education

Abstract

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.

Enterprise systems education

“…Student preparation entering into these courses is often widely varied. These courses often take the form of an enterprise systems integration topic, or some other closely related topic [39,43]. It is at this point in an educational program that students have developed a broad enough skill set to begin understanding the relationships between different areas of IT to one another and to the enterprise as a whole.…”

Case Study: A Career Development Program for New Engineering Faculty

“…Assessment of the effectiveness of the faculty development programs [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] is often qualitative. Some faculty development programs focus on issues specific to an engineering discipline [31][32][33], technology programs [34][35][36], adjunct or non-traditional faculty [37], and faculty at two-year institutions [38][39]. In contrast, the case study presented herein is intended to be broadly applicable to a wide range of engineering and technology disciplines, using quantitative data to assess both the effectiveness of the faculty development program and the performance improvements of individual faculty.…”

Growing and Training Effective Faculty

“…addresses the issues of high faculty turnover and describes the commitment required of the institution to implement a faculty development model. 5 Whether an institution is a research or teaching focused institution, there is an ABET requirement for faculty professional development (ABET, Criterion 6). The School of Engineering at The Citadel implemented a school-wide faculty development model.…”