Alliance for Graduate Education Postdoctoral Engineering Education Researchers

The Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program allowed CASEE to place postdoctoral fellows with members of our Research Community. Fellows were selected from among recent doctoral recipients in engineering and science disciplines who wished to receive 12 months of specialized training in the conduct of educational scholarship under the mentorship of a Senior Fellow or campus-based engineering educator. Postdoctoral Fellows now form the leading edge in fostering a transformation in the instructional effectiveness of the next generation of engineering faculty. The AGEP Postdoctoral Engineering Education Researchers (PEERs) project was envisioned as a minority-focused version of the highly popular, though now defunct, NSF Postdoctoral Fellowships for Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education (PFSMETE). However, the challenge of finding persons who were doctoral graduates in STEM disciplines AND who were interested in conducting engineering education research AND who were drawn from minority populations underrepresented in STEM proved significant. Although ten of the thirteen selected AGEP PEERs were female, only 3 were African-American, Hispanic-American, or Native American. In recognition of these challenges, NSF authorized a) the support of 9-week post-doctoral fellowships to selected students participating in the National Academies Christine Mirzayan Graduate Fellowship program (two of the four Fellows supported were African-American females and one was a Hispanic female), and b) conference travel support for faculty from minority serving institutions to attend activities intended to strengthen their engineering education research capabilities.
   

Of the 13 AGEP-PEERS,  nine are currently tenure-track faculty members at U.S. institutions and one is a director in a student support center within a college of engineering.