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HOW IMPORTANT IS EFFECTIVE TEACHING TO ENGINEERING FACULTY AND ADMINISTRATORS?

Catherine E. Brawner, Richard M. Felder, Rodney H. Allen, Rebecca Brent Research Triangle Educational Consultants/ North Carolina State University/ COMP-AID/ North Carolina State University

Abstract

The Southeastern University and College Coalition for Engineering Education (SUCCEED) has among its goals persuading and preparing engineering faculty to adopt effective teaching practices and improving the campus climate for undergraduate engineering education. To these ends it has designed and implemented a faculty development program that includes teaching effectiveness workshops, workshops for administrators on mentoring and supporting new faculty, and measures to create and sustain engineering faculty development programs on each member campus. To assess the impact of these efforts, the SUCCEED faculty development team designed and administered a survey of faculty teaching practices and attitudes toward teaching in 19971 and administered it again in 1999 2. This paper summarizes the responses to survey items in which faculty rated the importance of effective teaching to themselves, to faculty colleagues, and to campus administrators, and the importance of effective and innovative teaching in their institution’s faculty reward system.

In 1999, the survey respondents rated the importance of effective teaching to themselves very high, averaging 6.5 on a 7.0 scale. They rated its importance to their colleagues, department heads, deans, and top institutional administrators significantly lower, with the averages ranging from 5.1 to 5.6. Their ratings of the importance of effective and innovative teaching in the reward system were still lower—3.7 and 3.5, respectively. Significant differences in ratings were found by gender, primary academic function (teaching, teaching/research, and administration), involvement in SUCCEED, rank, and Carnegie Foundation classification of the institutions. All significant changes from 1997 to 1999 were in the negative direction. Our conclusion is that while SUCCEED’s faculty development efforts have had noteworthy positive effects in changing faculty instructional practices2, much work still remains to be done to create a sense among the faculty that efforts to improve teaching will be appreciated or rewarded.

Introduction

SUCCEED is one of a number of multi-university coalitions sponsored by the National Science Foundation to improve engineering education in the United States. It comprises eight engineering schools—Clemson University, Florida A & M and Florida State Universities (which have a joint engineering program), Georgia Institute of Technology, North Carolina A & T University, North Carolina State University, University of Florida, University of North Carolina

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Brawner, C., & Allen, R., & Felder, R. (2002, June), How Important Is Effective Teaching To Engineering Faculty And Administrators? Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10362