“Taking the Pulse of Your Graduate Students’ Experiences” UW ADVANCE Winter Quarter Pre-Tenure Faculty Workshop March 17, 2015

BECCA NEUMANN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, CIVIL & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING JIM BORGFORD-PARNELL ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR AND INSTRUCTIONAL CONSULTANT, CENTER FOR ENGINEERING, LEARNING AND TEACHING (CELT)

Taking the pulse of your graduate students’ experiences Becca Neumann Jim Borgford-Parnell

Mentoring For me: mentoring research group proving to be most difficult aspect of job – Was not happy with my mentorship as PhD student – Only knew what I didn’t want – Did not know what worked – No experience with a good mentoring model Get constructive feedback on many aspects of job… but no (direct) feedback given on mentoring – Teaching gets evaluated, students give feedback – Papers/proposals get evaluated, reviewers give feedback – Research group just quietly gets disgruntled or unmotivated

Skip Level Meeting Discussed lack of mentoring feedback with my husband (he works in industry) – “You need a skip level meeting.” – Employee meets with his/her boss’s boss. Academic version of ‘skip level’ meeting: Jim Borgford-Parnell (CELT) – Jim conducts mid-course and final student assessments of every class I have taught at UW – Couldn’t he do something similar with my research group? Yes!

Process Sent Jim questions I wanted answered with regards to: – Expectations – Setting & meeting goals – Interactions with advisor – Group collaboration & research support Jim met with research group – Everyone answered questions on their own – Came together as group to discuss answers I met with Jim to review both types of responses.

Outcomes Positive feeling in research group – She really does care! Good suggestions by group – Formalized orientation for new group members – More interaction with and feedback from research group We have started weekly group meetings in addition to one-on-one meeting – Start writing/reading from beginning Students have set up a writing group

Q&A SESSION

THANK YOU!