Preparing Future Physics Faculty

The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) and the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) have received a grant from NSF entitled “Shaping the Preparation of Future Science and Mathematics Faculty.” The project builds on and extends the Preparing Future Faculty program led by AAC&U and CGS since 1993 with support from the PEW Charitable Trusts. The goal of the project is to create model graduate programs to prepare future faculty for emerging and evolving roles in five academic disciplines-chemistry, computer science, mathematics, microbiology, and physics. The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) will be participating as a subcontractor to this grant along with the American Chemical Society, the American Society of Microbiology, the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education of the Association of Computing Machinery.

The overarching purpose of the project is to enhance the way academic departments prepare graduate students aspiring to an academic career for the full range of faculty roles and responsibilities in teaching, research, and service. Ultimately the project is expected to:

  1. Increase knowledge, broaden perspectives, and develop skills of graduate faculty members and graduate students about how to incorporate research, teaching, and service components into doctoral education for aspiring faculty.
  2. Develop model programs for the preparation of graduate students for faculty roles and responsibilities and to assess their effectiveness.
  3. Disseminate within the disciplines alternative models and promising practices for reshaping doctoral education for the future professorate.

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