Engineering Fellows Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。新型冠状病毒（COVID-19）大流行推动了一场技术革命，从根本上改变了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。尽管疫情的最终影响仍是未知数，但美国学术界继续面临招聘冻结、失业和就业市场普遍不确定性。这些负面后果对妇女和其他代表性不足的群体以及资源不足的机构造成了不成比例的影响。这场完美的风暴发生在美国创新和研究的首要地位面临前所未有的竞争压力的时候，提供留住各自领域优秀研究人员的途径至关重要。作为一个国家，我们不能失去一整批受过高等教育的研究工程师，但我们有这样做的危险，因为工程学博士生毕业后进入一个极具挑战性的就业市场，这可能迫使他们放弃他们的高级研究职业抱负。为了满足这一需求，美国工程教育协会（ASEE）将推出工程研究员（E-Fellows）计划，使最近的工程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，尽管当前经济衰退造成的COVID-19大流行。E-Fellows计划将提供丰富的博士后经验，为参与者在学术界或工业界的成功研究生涯做好准备，同时在招聘冻结和就业市场不确定性期间充当就业桥梁，帮助留住可能离开工程研究职业道路的研究员。电子研究员计划将支持来自不同背景的60名研究员，从2021年秋季开始，分两批进行为期两年的研究。电子研究员计划将为这两批工程研究人员提供支架和准备，并作为验证计划设计原则的试点，使工程界能够为未来几年工业和社会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差距，提供学术研究的实践经验，吸引和留住新的博士生进入学术途径，促进与我们国家最好的学者的联系，准备新的博士生导航具有挑战性的就业市场，并保留他们在技术研究领域。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，重点是申请材料中的知识价值和更广泛的影响。这个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，例如队列模型的应用，第一年和最终经验的实施，网络和指导经验的制定，以及在有意设计的基于结果的体验式学习理论框架内实现andragogogical及时的专业发展。将对每个群组进行为期五年的纵向评价，以评价研究金在以下方面的有效性：（1）使电子研究员成为就业市场的行家里手;（2）留住电子研究员作为各自领域的研究人员。该奖学金的纵向评估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导地位。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

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.