Efforts Aimed at Preparing Future Faculty

There are many efforts that are aimed at preparing graduate students for future faculty careers, however, what is often missing is preparation for faculty careers at non-R1 institutions. Since most PhDs are granted at R1 institutions, graduate students are most prevalently exposed to and prepared for faculty careers at R1 institutions. This project looks at the experiences of non -R1 engineering faculty and their pathway to get to their non-R1 position, with a focus on their graduate school experiences.

One of the research projects’ major contributions was to create a set of narratives based on the interviews with each participant. These narratives are available and are meant to provide current graduate students with examples of people who chose to pursue non-R1 positions.

In terms of putting this research into practice, Natascha has developed a workshop, titled “Finding the Right Academic Career Path for You,” which she presented at the NextProf Nexus Workshop at UC Berkeley in September 2018. The workshop packet can be found here.

A paper related to this project