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I Did Not Anticipate This: Experiences from the Early Years

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Conference

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Indianapolis, Indiana

Publication Date

June 15, 2014

Start Date

June 15, 2014

End Date

June 18, 2014

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Best of NEE

Tagged Division

New Engineering Educators

Page Count

19

Page Numbers

24.681.1 - 24.681.19

DOI

10.18260/1-2--20572

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/20572

Download Count

591

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Paper Authors

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Thomas Shepard University of St. Thomas

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Alison B. Hoxie University of Minnesota Duluth

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Dr. Alison B. Hoxie is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Her education includes a B.A. in Natural Science from the College of Saint Benedict (1999), a B.S.M.E (2001) and a Ph.D. (2007) from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She has held positions as a consulting engineering in power and energy sector, and as an Instructor at the University of Utah. Her current research focuses on cost effective methods for efficient utilization of biomass-derived oils in combustion applications.

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Matt Anderson Milwaukee School of Engineering

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Abstract

I Did Not Anticipate This: Experiences from the Early YearsWhat does the reality of being an instructor truly encompass? For most, this is something thatevolves while they are on the job. Courses and workshops whose objectives are to prepare futurefaculty often focus on big picture tasks while failing to touch on the many everyday hurdles thatone will experience. These challenges can be time consuming, controversial, cause significantstress, and have a tendency to blind-side junior faculty.The objective of this paper is to help new, or aspiring, engineering educators to be aware ofcommon issues they will likely deal with while identifying some key information in the literaturethat may be helpful. The topics addressed include academic misconduct, students withdisabilities, student requests, and institutional requests. The authors have teaching experience atfive different engineering schools ranging from liberal arts to R1 settings and the issuesdiscussed appear to be ubiquitous in undergraduate engineering. This paper further reflects onactual extreme experiences from the first couple years of teaching which were not anticipatedsuch as a case of cheating resulting in a lawyer’s involvement, having to physically stop onestudent from choking another and a student requesting a letter of character to stay out of prison.This paper concludes by discussing some of the positive experiences which were also notanticipated but experienced. By confronting these topics in a frank and public manner othersmay learn from these collective experiences and perhaps find themselves better prepared whenthey arise.

Shepard, T., & Hoxie, A. B., & Anderson, M. (2014, June), I Did Not Anticipate This: Experiences from the Early Years Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--20572

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