The University of Kentucky PFF initiative has several distinct features. The core of the program has been a graduate course Preparing Future Faculty in which faculty members from different institutions have participated in semester-long, continuing panel discussions and invited students to join them for day-long campus visits. Students study the roles and responsibilities of faculty at different types of institutions, faculty life cycles, advising and mentoring practices, the academic labor market, as well as preparations for job searches.
Three new courses have been developed that more fully explore the academy as a workplace and that prepare students to be faculty members. Each is designed to permit departments to develop or enhance discipline specific versions of the course.
Seminar on College Teaching
helps students gain knowledge about teaching and learning models and
provides them with teaching
strategies that maximize student learning.
Preparing Future Faculty Practicum in College Teaching is an experiential course that links students with a faculty mentor at a partner institution where they might teach or co-teach a course, present a talk on their research, attend faculty meetings, and/or participate in faculty development activities.
College Teaching in the 21st Century will alternate its focus between The Role of Instructional Technologies and The Impact of Increasing Diversity on Universities.
Special effort is being made to inform graduate faculty colleagues of the specific benefits that accrue to both students and a department through participation. A workshop series informs departments of the kinds of institutions at which graduates are getting jobs, shares insights from sister institutions about the qualifications sought in candidates for teaching positions, and reviews the history of PFF along with relevant data about student interest and success as a result of participating in PFF.
A peer-mentoring program prepares graduate students with PFF expertise to serve as mentors to new graduate students. A research project is underway asking recent UK doctorate-degree recipients to compare the various demands of their current faculty positions with the preparation they received in graduate school.
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