Assessing the Long-Term Impact of the Preparing Future Faculty Seminar

The Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) initiative for graduate students was launched in the United States in 1993 as a partnership between the Council of Graduate Schools and the Association of American Colleges and Universities to prepare graduate students for faculty careers at different institutional types and to provide them with teaching-related professional development. PFF programs have proliferated U.S. universities over the last two decades, but there has been limited research on the long-term impact of these programs. This study at the University of Michigan examines the career paths and attitudes of graduate students who participated in an annual, intensive, five-week PFF seminar between 2007 and 2013. The descriptive study explores the following research questions: (a) What are the career outcomes for PFF seminar participants compared with nonparticipants? (b) Does the exposure to a variety of institutional types in the PFF seminar lead to a greater appreciation of and openness to job opportunities at diverse institutions? and (c) Does the PFF seminar assist graduate students in their job searches and their chosen career paths? The results of this study contribute to our understanding of what universities can do to effectively prepare graduate students for their future careers

The Four Rs: Guiding CTLs with Responsiveness, Relationships, Resources, and Research

We offer a framework for guiding an effective Center for Teaching and Learning: Responsiveness, Relationships, Resources, and Research. Our intention is to fill a gap in the literature on guidance for CTL leadership. These four principles are grounded in both scholarly and experiential evidence, drawing from multiple CTL directors with a range of experience levels at different center and institutional types