Assessing the Long-Term Impact of the Preparing Future Faculty Seminar

Abstract

The Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) initiative for graduate students was launched in the United States in 1993 as a partnership between the Council of Graduate Schools and the Association of American Colleges and Universities to prepare graduate students for faculty careers at different institutional types and to provide them with teaching‐related professional development. PFF programs have proliferated U.S. universities over the last two decades, but there has been limited research on the long‐term impact of these programs. This study at the University of Michigan examines the career paths and attitudes of graduate students who participated in an annual, intensive, five‐week PFF seminar between 2007 and 2013. The descriptive study explores the following research questions: (a) What are the career outcomes for PFF seminar participants compared with nonparticipants? (b) Does the exposure to a variety of institutional types in the PFF seminar lead to a greater appreciation of and openness to job opportunities at diverse institutions? and (c) Does the PFF seminar assist graduate students in their job searches and their chosen career paths? The results of this study contribute to our understanding of what universities can do to effectively prepare graduate students for their future careers.

Preparing Future Faculty: Pedagogical Practice in Graduate School

“…Graduates of PFF programs and courses report valuing these teaching‐related professional development opportunities and their importance in preparation for the academic job search (DeNeef 2002; Schram, Pinder‐Grover, and Turcic 2017). At UMN, students who participated in PFF have self‐reported greater confidence in the skills necessary for successful teaching as well as transfer of those skills to their own classroom settings (Wingert & Massey 2004).…”

“It’s Hidden, After All:” A Modified Delphi Study Exploring Faculty and Students’ Perceptions of a Graduate Professional Seminar in Communication

“…Second, a faculty member may conclude that it is too much of a time investment to socialize a master's student who may not be in that environment very long. Understandably, faculty may cling to the myth that most graduate students will continue through a doctoral program to the professoriate (as illustrated by the implementation of Preparing Future Faculty [PFF] programs in 1993; Schram et al, 2017). With more and more students choosing careers outside of academe, faculty may be struggling to accept the diversity of the job market, instead mentoring students into traditional faculty roles as is evidenced by 87% of new faculty at research institutions feeling extremely or very well prepared and 56% of faculty working at 2-year institutions reporting feeling extremely or very well prepared (Okahana & Kinoshita, 2018).…”

The Impact of Extra‐Disciplinary Socialization on Graduate Student Educational Developers

“…Tierney and Rhoads () describe “anticipatory socialization” as the transition between roles as primarily students and recipients of knowledge toward becoming full professionals in their field and the creators of new disciplinary knowledge. Much research on graduate student socialization has focused on the goal of attaining a faculty career (Austin ; Austin and McDaniels ; Braxton and Baird ; Gardner ; Gardner ; Golde ; Lovitts ; Schram et al ). Graduate students are presumed to be transitioning from their previous roles as students to their anticipated roles as full‐time instructors.…”