Effective teaching practice
Cultivate fellows’ effective teaching practices through supervised instructional experience, with formative feedback on course planning, instruction, assessment, and student engagement.
The program
A nine-month program that integrates supervised teaching, faculty mentorship, structured professional development, and scholarly teaching practice into a single coherent year.
- Program name
- Visiting Assistant Professor Program — Engineering Education & Excellence (E3) Fellows
- Home unit
- Department of Engineering Education (EEd), Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, University of Florida
- Duration
- Nine months — Fall 2026 through Spring 2027
- Who it is for
- Recently graduated Ph.D. recipients, postdoctoral scholars, and early-career faculty appointed as Visiting Assistant Instructional Professors
- Teaching load
- One course in Fall 2026; two courses in Spring 2027
- Culminating deliverable
- A scholarly teaching contribution presented at the UF Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) Interface Conference
Program goals
Evidence-based pedagogy
Ground fellows in evidence-based, student-centered pedagogy and instructional technologies through structured professional development, connecting them to UF’s broader teaching and research communities of practice.
Reflective habits
Develop reflective teaching habits through sustained faculty mentorship and guided observation.
Scholarly contribution
Build fellows’ capacity to design, implement, and evaluate a teaching innovation within a course of record, culminating in a scholarly teaching contribution.
Program structure
The program integrates supervised teaching, mentorship, structured professional development, and scholarly teaching practice. Each fellow participates in four integrated components.
Embedded experiential supervised teaching
Fellows gain hands-on teaching experience through supervised instructional appointments. Each participant teaches one course during the Fall 2026 semester and two courses during the Spring 2027 semester, while receiving formative feedback from a mentor on course planning, instruction, assessment, and student engagement to support the development of effective teaching practices.
Faculty mentorship
Each fellow is paired with an experienced faculty mentor who provides individualized guidance throughout the program. Mentors meet biweekly with fellows in preparation for and through the semester — discussing teaching challenges, classroom observations, professional growth, and career development — followed by monthly check-ins.
Mentors also provide feedback on fellows’ instructional innovations and scholarly teaching projects, fostering reflective practice and continuous improvement.
Structured professional development
Fellows complete a formal teaching development program offered by the University of Florida Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) in Fall 2026. Participants must complete one of two tracks, developing a strong foundation in evidence-based teaching, student-centered instruction, assessment, and inclusive educational practices.
Great Teaching for New Faculty Certificate
Earned through the
Passport
to Great Teaching program.
Pathways
to Excellence
An alternative CTE track toward the same
foundation.
Scholarly teaching and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)
Fellows engage in a two-phase scholarly teaching experience.
Phase one — Fall 2026. Fellows conduct structured classroom observations of exemplary engineering courses by attending two class sessions and engaging in guided reflection on evidence-based instructional practices.
Phase two — Spring 2027. Building on those observations, professional development activities, and discussions with their faculty mentor, fellows propose an instructional innovation — a new pedagogy, educational technology, assessment strategy, or course redesign — to implement and evaluate in one of their Spring 2027 courses.
The program culminates in a scholarly teaching contribution presented at the UF CTE Interface Conference, fulfilling the appointment’s expectation of demonstrating scholarly teaching through the systematic evaluation and dissemination of instructional practice.
Section 4
Program assessment
Each fellow’s progress is evaluated through both formative and summative assessment across all program components.
Formative assessment
Ongoing feedback from faculty mentors based on observations of course planning, instruction, assessment, and student engagement, as well as discussions during biweekly mentoring meetings.
Summative requirements
- Completion of a UF Center for Teaching Excellence teaching development program — either the Great Teaching for New Faculty Certificate or the Pathways to Excellence track.
- Implementation and evaluation of an instructional innovation in a Spring 2027 course, culminating in a scholarly teaching presentation at the CTE Interface Conference.
- A final structured evaluation conducted jointly by the faculty mentor(s) and the Department or Unit Chair, assessing the fellow’s overall growth and readiness as an engineering educator.