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LESSONS LEARNED - PREPARING GRADUATE STUDENTS AND POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS FOR TENURE TRACK CAREERS THROUGH MENTORING CIRCLES

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Conference

2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Minneapolis, MN

Publication Date

August 23, 2022

Start Date

June 26, 2022

End Date

June 29, 2022

Conference Session

Faculty Development Division Technical Session 2

Page Count

7

DOI

10.18260/1-2--40662

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/40662

Download Count

250

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Paper Authors

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Morgan Broberg Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)

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Morgan Broberg is a Ph.D. candidate and Doctoral Fellow in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. Her innovative work focuses on the behavior, analysis, and design of resilient steel-concrete composite walls subjected to multi-hazard loading conditions such as earthquake, impact, and blast loads. She is also a graduate of the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University’s Teaching and Learning in Engineering Graduate Certificate Program and a founding member of Purdue's Engineering Academic Career Club.

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Baishakhi Bose Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)

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Dr. Baishakhi Bose is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL). She obtained her PhD. in Materials Engineering from Purdue University in 2021. Since 2014, she has taught courses in Civil, Materials and First Year Engineering to undergraduates, and mentored undergraduate and graduate students in STEM to foster research and professional development skills. She also has relevant experiences in organizing undergraduate research symposium/conferences, hosting professional development workshops, providing guidance on undergraduate/graduate school application. Currently, she serves as a Teaching Scholar for the K-12 STEM Education Program at Berkeley Lab and is involved with curriculum development of K-12 outreach at LBNL.

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Raul Pineda-Mendez Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)

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Rachel Gehr Purdue University at West Lafayette (PPI)

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Camila Garcia Jange Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)

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Jacqueline McDermott Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)

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Dr. Jackie McDermott joined the College of Engineering at Purdue University as the Assistant Director of Graduate Recruitment and Retention in August 2018. Jackie completed her B.S. in Biology from Hofstra University (NY) with minors in Spanish and Biochemistry, and her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Brandeis University (MA). At Purdue, Jackie is enthusiastic about supporting both prospective and current graduate students in their education and she has a specific focus on increasing the diversity of future engineering faculty and community.

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Michael Loui University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

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Now retired, Michael C. Loui held the Dale and Suzi Gallagher Professorship in Engineering Education at Purdue University from 2014 to 2019. He was previously Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and University Distinguished Teacher-Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has conducted research in computational complexity theory, in professional ethics, and in engineering education. He is a Carnegie Scholar, a Fellow of the IEEE, and a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education. Professor Loui was the editor of the Journal of Engineering Education from 2012 to 2017 and the executive editor of College Teaching from 2006 to 2012. He was Associate Dean of the Graduate College at Illinois from 1996 to 2000. He directed the theory of computing program at the National Science Foundation from 1990 to 1991. He earned the Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980 and the B.S. at Yale University in 1975.

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Jessica Eisma The University of Texas at Arlington

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David Devine Cleveland State University

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Purdue University, PhD student, Civil Engineering (Construction Engineering and Management)

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Abstract

Landing a tenure-track position in engineering can be a challenging process; this lessons-learned paper presents a structured mentoring program focused on preparing graduate students and postdoctoral researchers for tenure-track faculty careers. To demystify the timeline, application process, and experience of being a faculty member, graduate students at Purdue University created the Engineering Academic Career Club (EACC) in 2018. The flagship program of the EACC is the Summer Mentoring Circles program, which was launched in 2019 to help members navigate the academic job market. Each mentoring circle consists of two faculty members and four to six graduate students and postdocs from similar engineering backgrounds. Each mentoring circle meets at a predetermined time twice a month from May to August. Not only do mentees grow through additional training in the mentoring circles program, but faculty mentors also benefit. After three years of conducting the mentoring circles program (2019 in-person, 2020 hybrid, and 2021 virtual), the EACC has developed a program structure including questions, prompts, and exercises that enable graduate student and postdoc mentees to be successful on the job market and in their future careers as faculty. While there are many mentoring programs in either group or one-on-one formats, the EACC’s mentoring circles program is unique in its mission to develop and build a community of the next generation of faculty members. This lessons-learned paper will review the development of the mentoring circles program, compare this program with previous programs, and provide resources for others to implement a similar program at their own institutions.

Broberg, M., & Bose, B., & Pineda-Mendez, R., & Gehr, R., & Garcia Jange, C., & McDermott, J., & Loui, M., & Eisma, J., & Devine, D. (2022, August), LESSONS LEARNED - PREPARING GRADUATE STUDENTS AND POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS FOR TENURE TRACK CAREERS THROUGH MENTORING CIRCLES Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40662

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