Graduate Student and Faculty Member: An Exploration of Career and Personal Decisions

Abstract

Cory is currently a NSF Graduate Research Fellow pursuing a Masters in Industrial and Systems Engineering and a Ph.D. in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. He has worked to develop multiple entrepreneurial education efforts including an upper-level, interdisciplinary course on starting companies and a freshman engineering course on innovation and entrepreneurship. He has participated in trainings for and implemented both the Ice House Entrepreneurship and the Lean LaunchPad pedagogies. Cory has experience in professional engineering, higher education, and high school education. It is this combination of experience that led him to Virginia Tech to pursue a doctoral degree in Engineering Education. His professional and research interests include understanding engineering faculty members' decisions and behaviors, the institutional structures that influence both engineering education and entrepreneurship, and the interactions between educational pedagogy and entrepreneurship.

Catalyzing Engineering Student Identity Development through an Independent Design Project

“…Records of the experience occurred in the form of auto-ethnographic reflections taken from the participant-observation standpoint, consistent with other auto-ethnographic studies (i.e., [2], [3]). This precedent holds that some value can be garnered from the subjective insights of an individual as described by Patsavas and Caldwell: "Because several critical aspects of educational transformation are both subjective and experiential, this "case study" approach is presented as a source of additional information to consider when examining the learning goals and processes associated with developing student capability and interest in the research process [2].…”

“…This experience occurred during the "middle years of engineering study" and "highlights a creative, successful effort" that can be adapted to individual engineering students or various engineering programs [1]. Records of the experience occur in the form of auto-ethnographic reflections taken from the participantobservation standpoint, consistent with previous research [2], [3]. These auto-ethnographic reflections were recorded weekly, and after specific instances of major development or learning.…”

Toward a Theory of Engineering Professorial Intentions: The Role of Research Group Experiences

“…For example, “Preparing Future Faculty” (PFF) and “Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate” expose upper-level graduate students to different institutional types (Lynch & Sears, 2011), provide opportunities for students to develop their teaching skills (Purdy, Bishop, Fried, Kukreti, & Lewandowski, 2003), and provide supportive networks of faculty and peers (Carter-Veale, Tull, Rutledge, & Joseph, 2016). Through these programs, students “try on” the roles of faculty (McCord, Hixson, Ingram, & McNair, 2014) and learn about the range of faculty responsibilities (teaching, research, and service).…”

Collaborative Autoethnographic Study of a Large-Scale Flipped Classroom Implementation with Multiple Instructors

“…This research has been designed as an autoethnography, specifically a collaborative autoethnography is defined as "engineering in the study of self, collectively" [9]. The intent of collaborative autoethnography is to engage in a process that reflects on the experiences of a collaborative effort, it is "a process because as the researcher studies and analyzes their own experiences, meaning is made influencing future experiences and reflections" [10]. The collaborative autoethnography approach merges together three distinct research methods and approaches: (1) the reflexive study of self through autobiography, (2) a lens from the study of culture through ethnography, and (3) the multiple perspectives from a group through collaboration [11].…”