Thanks, Barry! We worked hard on that acronym. 🤣

We are familiar with some research that has been done related to graduate student professional development in the Sciences, but we are familiar with the engineering education literature. Any specific citations or authors that you could suggest we read would be greatly appreciated! We are actually meeting with Natasha Speer this week to discuss the possibility of organizing a conference on STEM graduate student professional development for teaching.

Paige, what an amazing project! I was so inspired by the work you are doing. At one point you mentioned that you asked students to draw what an engineer looked like and then saw how that drawing changed to look more like them. We did a similar activity last fall with our graduate students where we asked them to draw a mathematician and then had a follow-up conversation about what their drawings say about how mathematicians are perceived and what stereotypes we may hold. This type of stereotype and identity analysis has also been done with elementary students around the world: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1017523230758

We are welcoming our first cohort into the ELITE PD programs at Virginia Commonwealth and Oregon State this fall. VCU has a smaller graduate program, so we expect to have 5-10 students in our first cohort. OSU has a larger program, so I think they are expecting around 10-15 students in their first cohort.

Great question, Stan! From previous projects, we know that department support of graduate student professional development is critical, which is why our research focuses on both the individual (graduate students) and the department. While all three of our departments are supportive, we also all have different constraints. For example, master's students at SDSU do not have tuition waivers, so we have to think about equitable ways to provide them with professional development without burdening them financially. As part of our project, we plan to meet regularly with our department leadership to make sure we are meeting their needs and keeping their support.

Hi Stan! We have found that the support of our departments has been an important aspect of getting this program going. I teach the PD course at SDSU, so the fact that we have such a starting course (that also counts for teaching credit) demonstrates some commitment. I think support is important when considering sustaining change. 

I think we will be reaching out to you also to talk about how you constructed your IBL PD sessions. :) 

Great question, Margie! Currently, faculty in our departments do not receive the same training as graduate students, but there are different professional development opportunities for them to engage in (through the university-wide centers for teaching and learning). I know that some researchers (e.g., Zareen Rahman & Eileen Murray) have thought more deeply about faculty professional development. One important difference that I would foresee is thinking about how PD designed for novice teachers (graduate students) would need to be adapted for more experienced teachers (faculty). We are engaging with graduate students at the time when they are really just forming their own personal teaching philosophies and practices, whereas faculty have many years of experience and beliefs that have already been formed. We also have the advantage of building our PD into the "normal" graduate student experience (e.g., attending orientations, taking classes) but there may not be a similar expectation for faculty to be continually engaged in professional development. So I would expect that buy-in and willingness to participate would be another challenge that would be faced when developing a similar PD model for faculty.

We agree, Lindsay! We especially think it's important for pedagogical training to be part of mathematics students' graduate experience since the majority of students who earn a Ph.D. in mathematics end up in teaching-intensive positions. Thankfully, more mathematics graduate departments are offering pedagogy courses and I hope that a similar trend is happening in other departments across campus.