Chemistry graduate programs typically do little to prepare faculty to teach. As a result, assistant professors have a limited knowledge of the research on how people learn and develop their teaching skills and approaches on the job. Initiatives in physics and biology have demonstrated that short, national workshops for new faculty can significantly raise their knowledge of research-based instructional practices. Members of the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative initiated the New Faculty Workshop (CSC NFW) in order to provide a similar opportunity to chemistry assistant professors at research-intensive universities. The long-term goal of the CSC NFW is to promote the teaching identity of academic chemists, who mostly identify themselves as researchers. Along with the implementation of the workshop, a longitudinal, quasi-experimental design study was undertaken to evaluate the extent of its impact. Online surveys were collected one week before and one week after the workshop as well as one year later from CSC NFW participants and a control group that consisted of newly-hired chemistry faculty that did not participate in the workshop. Classroom video recordings from both workshop participants and the control group were collected during the fall semester falling the workshop and two years later. Video recordings were analyzed using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) and the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS). These data were triangulated with the Student Evaluation for Educational Quality (SEEQ) survey which was collected from students in the observed classrooms. Teaching beliefs were measured with the adapted Self-Efficacy Toward Teaching Inventory (SETI-A) and the Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI). Barriers to implementation of new teaching strategies were also captured. In this presentation the impact of the CSC NFW will be discussed by sharing the results and interpretation of the longitudinal data collected from two cohorts.

Long-term impacts of the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative New Faculty Workshop

249th National Meeting (2015)

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