Engineering Fellows Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)冠状病毒(新冠肺炎)的大流行推动了一场技术革命，正在从根本上改变我们的生活和工作方式，包括对高等教育生态系统的重大破坏。虽然疫情的最终影响尚不清楚，但美国学术界继续面临招聘冻结、失业和总体就业市场不确定性的问题。这些负面后果对妇女和其他任职人数不足的群体以及资源匮乏的机构造成了不成比例的影响。这场完美风暴发生之际，美国创新和研究的首要地位正面临前所未有的竞争压力，为留住各自领域的高才华研究人员提供途径至关重要。作为一个国家，我们承受不起失去一大批受过高等教育的研究工程师，但我们正面临着这样做的危险，因为工程学博士毕业生进入一个极具挑战性的就业市场，这可能会迫使他们放弃高级研究事业的雄心。为了满足这一需求，美国工程教育学会将启动工程学研究员(E-Fellows)计划，使应届工程学博士毕业生能够在美国学术机构获得为期两年的博士后职位，尽管目前新冠肺炎疫情导致经济低迷。E-Flows计划将提供丰富的博士后经验，为参与者在学术界或行业成功的研究生涯做好准备，同时也在招聘冻结和就业市场不确定的时期充当就业桥梁，帮助留住原本可能离开工程研究职业道路的研究员。从2021年秋季开始，E-Fellows计划将支持来自不同背景的60名研究员，为期两年，分两组进行，该计划将为这两组工程研究人员提供支撑和准备，并作为验证计划设计原则的试点，使工程界能够为行业和社会在未来几年所需的工程劳动力做好准备。基于成功的计算创新研究员(CIFellows)计划，电子研究员计划将弥合这一差距，提供学术研究方面的实践经验，吸引和留住新的博士生进入学术途径，加强与我们国家最好的学者的联系，为新的博士生在充满挑战的就业市场中导航做好准备，并将他们留在技术研究领域。电子研究员计划的申请和选择将遵循对优点和多样性指标(沿着个人和机构层面)的全面评估，重点放在智力优点和申请者材料的更广泛影响上。这一独特的新奖学金计划将得到以研究为基础的、高影响力的教育方法的支持，例如应用队列模式、实施第一年和最后阶段的经验、建立网络和指导经验，以及在有意设计的以结果为基础的体验式学习理论框架内实现语言上的即时专业发展。将为每个队列完成为期五年的纵向评估，以评估研究金在以下方面的成效：(1)使电子研究员成为精通就业市场的人；(2)保留电子研究员作为各自领域的研究人员。奖学金纵向评估的结果将为未来的工程奖学金设计提供必要的信息，以保持美国的技术领先地位。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2)The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has propelled a technological revolution that is radically transforming the way in which we live and work, including a significant disruption in the higher education ecosystem. While the ultimate impact of the pandemic is still unknown, the U.S. academic sector continues to face hiring freezes, lost jobs, and general job market uncertainty. These negative consequences are disproportionately impacting women and other underrepresented groups as well as low-resourced institutions. This perfect storm occurs at a time when the primacy of U.S. innovation and research is facing unprecedented competitive pressure and providing pathways to retain highly talented researchers in their fields is crucial. As a country, we cannot afford to lose an entire cohort of highly educated research engineers, but we are in danger of doing just that as doctoral engineering students graduate into an extremely challenging job market that could force them to abandon their advanced research career ambitions. To address this need, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) will launch the Engineering Fellows (E-Fellows) program, enabling recent engineering doctoral graduates to obtain two-year postdoctoral positions at U.S. academic institutions despite the current economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The E-Fellows program will provide rich postdoctoral experiences that will prepare participants for successful research careers in academia or industry while also serving as an employment bridge during a time of hiring freezes and job market uncertainty, helping to retain fellows who might otherwise leave the engineering research career pathway. The E-Fellows program will support a total of sixty fellows from diverse backgrounds, for two years in two cohorts, starting in fall 2021.The E-Fellows program will scaffold and prepare these two cohorts of engineering researchers and serve as a pilot to validate program design tenets that will enable the engineering community to prepare the engineering workforce that industry and society will need in coming years. Based on the successful Computing Innovation Fellows (CIFellows) program, the E-Fellows program will bridge the gap to provide hands-on experience in academic research, attract and retain new doctoral students into academic pathways, boost connections to our nation's best scholars, prepare new doctoral students to navigate the challenging job market, and retain them in technical research fields. Application and selection to the E-Fellows program will follow a comprehensive evaluation of merit and diversity indicators (along individual and institutional dimensions), with emphasis on intellectual merit and broader impacts in applicant materials. This unique new fellowship program will be supported by research-based, high-impact educational methods such as the application of a cohort model, implementation of first-year and culminating experiences, enactment of networking and mentoring experiences, and fulfillment of andragogical just-in-time professional development, within an intentionally designed outcome-based experiential learning theoretical framework. A five-year longitudinal evaluation will be completed for each cohort to evaluate the effectiveness of the fellowship in (1) preparing E-Fellows to be job market savvy and (2) retaining E-Fellows as researchers in their fields. The outputs of the fellowship’s longitudinal evaluation will inform future engineering fellowship design necessary to maintain U.S. technological leadership.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.