The rising engineering education faculty experience (REEFE): Preparing junior colleagues

Despite the importance of professional development, for most graduate students as up-and-coming faculty members professional development is informal at best. Graduate programs often emphasize gaining technical knowledge, skills, and abilities through courses and research projects, but provide less opportunity for future faculty members to gain experience with teaching, service, communication, assessment, proposal writing, etc. To provide this experience, we developed the Rising Engineering Education Faculty Experience (REEFE). Founded on theoretical and practical models of graduate student development, REEFE is an innovative faculty apprenticeship program for engineering education graduate students that places students in visiting faculty member positions at host schools. This paper describes the foundations of REEFE and the program itself. We also offer lessons learned from the host school, sending school, and participants based on prior REEFE implementations. We hope our learnings prompt discussions regarding how to effectively prepare future engineering education faculty.