(448a) How We Teach Teaching: Graduate Student Instructor Training in Chemical Engineering

In Spring 2024, the Education Division surveyed departments in the US and Canada over how they trained or otherwise prepared graduate student instructors (GSIs) and the teaching activities of GSIs in these roles. We use the term graduate student instructors to denote a very broad range of teaching positions that graduate students may hold in the department including, but not limited to, instructors, teaching assistants (TAs), graders, readers, and lab managers, as all of these positions support the learning of chemical engineering students. This survey has reached departments big and small (from those with 3 GSIs to over 100); those with and without teaching requirements for their graduate students (0 to 2+ years of required teaching); and a wide range of training hours for GSIs (from 0 hours of training to 8+ hours of orientations, workshops, and discipline-specific pedagogy sessions).

In this first-of-its-kind survey on engineering GSI training (as far as the authors are aware), the goal of the project is to help departments better understand and learn from others how they can improve their development of GSIs both as essential instructors for current students, but also to prepare graduate students as future faculty in chemical engineering. Trends in topics for discipline/department-specific training will be shared, along with how we assess and give feedback to GSIs on their teaching. Suggestions as to how ASEE/AIChE can help to support GSI training initiatives will also be shared and discussed.