What is "Preparing Future Faculty"?

Preparing Future Faculty is a joint initiative by American Association of Colleges and Universities and the Council of Graduate Schools to improve the preparation of graduate students for faculty roles. About half of new Ph.D.s go to work in academia, and only 3% of America's post-secondary institutions are doctoral institutions. Consequently, the vast majority of doctoral students will work in institutions very different from the one in which they were trained. Institutions conducting searches for faculty members say that they receive hundreds of applications, but that candidates rarely give evidence of expertise in teaching, any awareness of the special qualities of that institution, or any expectation that they could contribute to the departmental or institutional mission (Gaff, Pruitt-Logan & Weibl, 2000).

In 1994, American Association of Colleges and Universities, and the Council of Graduate Schools, funded by Pew Charitable trust, launched programs at several institutions. Although quite different from one another, they had some common themes: Preparing students to integrate teaching, research and service, partnership with non-doctoral institutions, mentoring students in their roles as future faculty, and preparing students for new trends in education, such as diversity and technology. These grants were to the graduate schools of doctoral (mostly R1) institutions. They were expected to form clusters, partnerships with non-doctoral institutions, so that students would learn about the ways in which faculty responsibilities are affected by institutional context. Institutions were encouraged to form partnerships that would increase doctoral students' awreness of diversity issues and would help form a pipeline for increasing the representation of ethnic minorities in higher education, and women in the sciences.

However, the leadership of PFF was aware that faculty don't live at the grad school. They live in their departments, and their primary professional allegiance is to their discipline and its organizations. In 1998, funding from NSF allowed them to launch a set of discipline-based programs. The national organizations for several math and science disciplines set up competitions for departments to propose their own PFF programs and set up their own partner clusters. In 1999, this initiative was extended to the social sciences and humanities.

American Psychological Association was one of 6 disciplinary organizations, who each selected 4 clusters made up of a doctoral institution and its non-doctoral partners. APA chose to fund projects proposed by: University of New Hampshire, University of Georgia, University of Colorado, and Miami University.

Miami's partner institutions are: College of Mount St. Joseph, Northern Kentucky University, Earlham College, and Miami's regional campuses at Hamilton and Middletown.

The APA-PFF program consists of activities targeted toward 3 groups: second-year grad students, advanced grad students, and the department as a whole. Second-year students will, as part of their Teaching Seminar, visit partner campuses, shadow faculty members, and meet with undergraduate students. Advanced students may apply to participate in a year-long APA-PFF Scholars program, which will include a variety of activities such as professional development "brown bags", teaching conferences, "placement" on a partner campus, on-site mentoring of the "placement" by partner faculty, and "reverse shadowing" of the grad student by partner undergraduates. The entire department will be invited to the professional development brown bags and related colloquia.

Preparing Future Faculty programs are a win-win-win game for students, their doctoral institutions and their partners. A survey of PFF participants indicates that alumni of such programs believe that it has enhanced their understanding of faculty roles, increased awreness of diverse institutions, increased their academic career interest, helped them be competitive in the job market. Doctoral institutions win because PFF programs impact indices of grad program quality, such as: placement of alumni, alumni satisfaction, recruitment of high-caliber students, and student diversity (Lee, 2000). Partner campuses also benefit, particularly in terms of the opportunities for undergraduates to interact with graduate students. Grad students bring youthful enthusiasm to sharing their knowledge about psychology. They may have specialized expertise, such as use of technology or feminist pedagogy, which may be unavailable among partner faculties, which tend to be small in number. Graduate students can also serve as role models and mentors for undergraduates who seek admission to graduate programs. Secondary benefits include strengthening collegial relations among departments, with related benefits such as possible scholarly collaboration and recruitment opportunities. It also brings dignity and respect to all of the work that faculty do that integrates teaching, scholarship, and service. In the long run, we believe that participation in programs such as these will raise the quality of preparation of new faculty in our discipline and therefore the overall quality of education in our discipline.

For more info about Preparing Future Faculty: http://www.preparing-faculty.org/

To learn more about the need for PFF programs, read the personal experiences of a first-year faculty member