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Pre- and Post-tenure: Perceptions of Requirements and Impediments for Mechanical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Technology Faculty

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Conference

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual On line

Publication Date

June 22, 2020

Start Date

June 22, 2020

End Date

June 26, 2021

Conference Session

Mechanical Engineering Technical Session: Potpourri

Tagged Division

Mechanical Engineering

Page Count

14

DOI

10.18260/1-2--35070

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/35070

Download Count

339

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Paper Authors

biography

Benjamin B. Wheatley Bucknell University

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Benjamin Wheatley was awarded a B.Sc. degree in Engineering from Trinity College (Hartford, CT, USA) in 2011 and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO, USA) in 2017. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA, USA). His pedagogical areas of interest include active learning approaches, ethics, and best practices as they relate to computational modeling. He runs the Mechanics and Modeling of Orthopaedic Tissues Laboratory at Bucknell, where they use computational and experimental techniques to better understand the mechanics of musculoskeletal soft tissues and human movement.

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biography

Elif Miskioğlu Bucknell University

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Dr. Elif Miskioğlu is an early-career engineering education scholar and educator. She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering (with Genetics minor) from Iowa State University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Ohio State University. Her early Ph.D. work focused on the development of bacterial biosensors capable of screening pesticides for specifically targeting the malaria vector mosquito, Anopheles gambiae. As a result, her diverse background also includes experience in infectious disease and epidemiology, providing crucial exposure to the broader context of engineering problems and their subsequent solutions. These diverse experiences and a growing passion for improving engineering education prompted Dr. Miskioğlu to change her career path and become a scholar of engineering education. As an educator, she is committed to challenging her students to uncover new perspectives and dig deeper into the context of the societal problems engineering is intended to solve. As a scholar, she seeks to not only contribute original theoretical research to the field, but work to bridge the theory-to-practice gap in engineering education by serving as an ambassador for empirically driven, and often novel, educational practices.

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Eliana Christou University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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Nicholas Tymvios Bucknell University

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Nicholas Tymvios received a B.S. and M.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Purdue University in 1999, and 2002 respectively. After working for four years in Cyprus in the construction industry, he was accepted into the Ph.D. program at Oregon State University, where he graduated in 2013 with a degree in Civil Engineering with emphasis in Construction Engineering and Management. His area of concentration is construction safety, and in particular Prevention through Design.
Upon graduation, he worked for four years as an Assistant Professor at UNC-Charlotte. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA, USA).

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Abstract

The tenure process began in the United States in 1915, and since then it has been the subject of both commendation and condemnation. Still, the tenure process is the norm in the majority of higher education institutions in the United States. Tenure remains highly desirable for many in academia, and those in mechanical engineering and mechanical engineering technology are no exception. This paper aims to 1) determine the variability in perceptions of tenure requirements among both assistant and associate professors in mechanical engineering and mechanical engineering technology programs and 2) identify perceived impediments for faculty seeking to obtain tenure. Similar surveys were sent to assistant and associate professors in the same programs for reporting perceptions of tenure requirements and to identify the impediments they faced towards their tenure process. The motivation for this research is to bring to the surface perceptions and concerns assistant professors have in obtaining tenure, and to identify if these concerns were also true to already tenured faculty. Faculty from ABET accredited programs in tenure-track positions were identified through an online search, and were provided with an online survey to complete. Faculty responses were categorized according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher education that classifies institutions according to their research activity. The authors hope that this paper will spark conversations regarding clarity of requirements, and a discussion about work-life balance for those on the tenure path.

Wheatley, B. B., & Miskioğlu, E., & Christou, E., & Tymvios, N. (2020, June), Pre- and Post-tenure: Perceptions of Requirements and Impediments for Mechanical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Technology Faculty Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--35070

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2020 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015