Transitioning From Industry To Education: The Second Year

Abstract

The transition from industry to education was an exciting, terrifying, and rewarding process. The first year offered numerous challenges and opportunities including how to effectively utilize 30 years of engineering industrial experience in the classroom. In the end, many lessons were learned and true partnership developed with the students. They were learning to be engineers at the same time that a former engineering manager was learning to become an effective teacher. Both learned a great deal from each other and together.Then the second academic year began bringing with it an entirely new set of challenges and opportunities. Instead of the activities becoming easier and perhaps somewhat routine, they were even more complicated and time consuming. New obligations required extra time and effort including committee involvement, starting a new series of courses, implementing new programs, planning for an additional new academic program, the pursuit of tenure, and of course teaching a full load of classes. How could all of this be accomplished?The second year demanded far more effort than the first, but the experience gained proved to be invaluable and was fully utilized. The skills directly transferred from actual engineering and managerial experiences were once again applied to the education process with great success. Being proficient in planning, scheduling, organizing, exploring, controlling, mentoring, communicating, leading, budgeting, administrating and allocating scarce resources made completing the tasks possible. It wasn't easy but the hard work was rewarded with a wonderful and inspiring year. This paper describes the trials, tribulations, successes and lessons learned during the second year as a full-time engineering educator. The results may be of great benefit to new faculty members along with those in industry considering a similar career change.