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Integrative Engineering Leadership Initiative for Teaching Excellence (iELITE)

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Conference

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Salt Lake City, Utah

Publication Date

June 23, 2018

Start Date

June 23, 2018

End Date

July 27, 2018

Conference Session

Developing Teaching and Mentoring Skills

Tagged Division

Graduate Studies

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

16

DOI

10.18260/1-2--30696

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/30696

Download Count

373

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Paper Authors

biography

Hyun Hannah Choi University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Hannah Choi is a senior lead instructional designer at the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. She collaborates with faculty to conduct research, program evaluations, and learning outcomes assessments pertinent to innovative curriculum designs and educational technologies. She is responsible for fostering continuous improvement in teaching, student experiences, and educational programs through the use of development and learning theories. Her areas of focus include, among others, experiential learning, internationalizing curriculum, online learning, and educational technology innovations.

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Yuting W. Chen University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Dr. Yuting W. Chen received the B.S. degree from University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign in 2007, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2009 and 2011, all in Electrical Engineering. Prior to joining the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a lecturer in 2015, she worked at IBM Systems Group in Poughkeepsie, NY in z Systems Firmware Development. Her current interests include recruitment and retention of under-representative students in STEM, integrative training for graduate teaching assistants, and curriculum innovation for introductory programming courses.

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A. Mattox Beckman Jr. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-0935-365X

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Mattox Beckman is a teaching assistant professor in the Computer Science department. He earned his doctorate from UIUC in 2003 under Sam Kamin,
specializing in programming languages. He was a senior lecturer at the Illinois Institute of Technology for 12 years, and then returned to UIUC in 2015, where he teaches the Programming Languages and Data Structures courses. He has recently adopted Computer Science Education as his research focus.

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Lucas Anderson University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Lucas Anderson is a Specialist in Education at the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning (CITL) at the University of Illinois. He organizes the central campus teacher training program for the more than 800 new Teaching Assistants (TAs) Illinois welcomes each year. He continues to work with TAs throughout their graduate career by observing their classes, helping them collect and interpret feedback from their students, and shepherding them through CITL’s teaching certificate program. He offers a variety of workshops every year to faculty, staff, TAs, and undergraduates, on topics including course design, running effective discussions, and using humor in the classroom.

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Blake Everett Johnson University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Dr. Blake Everett Johnson received his doctorate in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012. Dr. Johnson now works as a lecturer and lab manager in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois. While remaining interested and active in the field of experimental fluid mechanics, he has chosen to spend most of his professional energy on improving the teaching of thermo/fluids laboratory courses through the development of engaging and intellectually-stimulating laboratory exercises, as well as improving introductory mechanics education and design courses in the MechSE department.

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Matthew D. Goodman University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Chris Migotsky University of Illinois

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Chris Migotsky is the Coordinator of Faculty Teaching Programs within the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois. He also has college-level academic advising duties with undergraduate students from all departments. He focuses on faculty development, curriculum change, and assessment and evaluation related to teaching and learning.

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Nicole Johnson-Glauch

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Nicole received her B.S. in Engineering Physics at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) in May 2013. She is currently working towards a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) under Professor Angus Rockett and Geoffrey Herman. Her research is a mixture between understanding defect behavior in solar cells and student learning in Materials Science. Outside of research she helps plan the Girls Learning About Materials (GLAM) summer camp for high school girls at UIUC.

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Abstract

A team of engineering faculty, in collaboration with professionals around campus, designed a new teaching and leadership program and successfully offered it as a pilot course for two semesters, beginning in the spring of 2017. Motivated to prepare graduate students for careers in both academia and industry, this program aims to enhance the teaching skills of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) while simultaneously augmenting their professional skills. Our goal is to train the next generation of leaders who will possess technical and academic expertise as well as critical skills such as communication, organization, and relationship-building. The majority of GTAs do not have prior teaching experience when they start their appointments. Although workshops offered by a campus-level teaching center are a quick and efficient way to introduce new GTAs to their role, follow-up programs are needed to further develop their teaching effectiveness and to properly train them in the specific teaching requirements of their disciplines. Teaching can play a prominent role in the professional development of GTAs. Nearly half of graduate students will take up careers outside of academia, but a typical PhD program provides little direct training for leadership in a non-academic setting. However, by learning to teach well, GTAs develop many leadership and communication skills that will transfer well to their future careers. Activities such as organizing and presenting material, working effectively with instructors and fellow GTAs, and communicating effectively with students present an opportunity to develop communication and leadership skills that will be highly valued whether the GTA goes into academia or industry. For the first iteration, we focused on the design of the program, based on literature and in collaboration with various university education professionals. In the second iteration, we initiated strategic partnerships with various engineering departments, resulting in a dramatic increase in enrollment. We have also deepened the integrative components between teaching skills and leadership skills in the course based on our reflection and feedback from the first iteration. Our program evaluation uses two surveys: the STEM GTA-Teaching Self-Efficacy Scale and a modified version of Alpay and Walsh's skill-perception inventory. The STEM GTA-Teaching Self-Efficacy Scale evaluates teaching assistants' belief in their ability to teach in the STEM area. Alpay and Walsh's skills-perception inventory assesses the participants' perceptions of transferable leadership skills, such as time management, self-awareness, communication, and teamwork. We modified the inventory to see if GTAs perceived that teaching would provide them with opportunities to enhance transferable leadership skills. In this presentation, we will describe our collaborative design process, strategic partnerships with various engineering departments, and enhancements of the integrative approach. Additionally, we will discuss students’ perception in enhancing their teaching and leadership skills and viewing teaching opportunities to foster transferable leadership skills though our program.

Choi, H. H., & Chen, Y. W., & Beckman, A. M., & Anderson, L., & Johnson, B. E., & Goodman, M. D., & Migotsky, C., & Johnson-Glauch, N. (2018, June), Integrative Engineering Leadership Initiative for Teaching Excellence (iELITE) Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--30696

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