Track 2: PROMISE Engineering Institute Mentor Academy

承诺工程学院-指导学院（PEI-MA）将为工程研究生带来“行政领导计划”的概念。高管领导力项目和类似风格的论坛通常包括分享专家的建议，讨论挑战和成功策略，以及培养同事网络。然而，这些培训项目通常是为那些已经担任领导角色的职业人士设计的，并且提供给他们，他们正在成为组织的执行领导者，例如首席执行官、总裁、校长。PEI-MA将为研究生带来这种专注和有影响力的体验。该项目将扩展高管领导力发展模式，通过虚拟会议和基于群体的会议体验，在最初的学院学习后提供便利的指导和后续跟进。PEI-MA将在研究生还在学校的时候就把他们带入领导力生态系统，并让他们接触到已经是大学校长的有成就的领导者。PEI-MA将利用最近成为大学校长的黑人工程系主任的成功，并将利用“院长到校长”的典范作为PEI-MA的杰出演讲者，鼓励学生将自己视为未来的工程领导者。演讲者将分享他们在职业生涯早期的成功、挑战和建议，以及通往终身教职、领导机会、院长职位和大学校长职位的轨迹，同时不忽视文化问题。研究生学员将继续以短期导师的身份，与这些校长进行后续、重点突出的一对一交流。校长将学生与资源、支持者、潜在雇主和其他榜样联系起来。通过同辈、员工和模范校长的指导，该项目寻求在学生中建立世代工程领导身份。该计划旨在培养这种身份，重视多样性，并建立一个导师网络，以鼓励保留和追求工程学术职业道路。PEI-MA将分享角色和环境的例子，这些角色和环境提供了为科学和技术做出重大贡献的机会，并利用工程和解决问题的技能来提高高等教育的领导力。PEI-MA将是加州大学戴维斯分校（UC Davis）和马里兰大学巴尔的摩县（UMBC）之间的合作伙伴关系。加州大学戴维斯分校和UMBC将合作开办一个工程指导学院，以测试一种变革理论。PEI-MA将举办四项活动，每年有24名研究生直接参与，每组12人，为期两年。来自美国各地的10位现任大学校长将担任导师，由大学管理人员组成的项目团队将担任导师兼促进者。PEI-MA将形成一个指导网络或星座，以补充研究生在其本国学术部门的经验。这四项活动将包括：1)在加州举办为期3天的研讨会，有导师校长和导师辅导员参加；2)研究生和导师校长之间的后续个性化虚拟会议；3)在全年的工程会议上促进联系；4)在马里兰州举办夏季成功学院，邀请该地区的研究生向导师学习，并建立同伴关系。研究问题将考察PEI-MA模型的方式：影响职业和领导抱负，形成世代工程领导身份，提供讨论种族主义等困难话题的空间，并提供适合传统上服务不足群体学生需求的指导。该项目将为培养在技术上有突出贡献的未来工程教授提供机会，并考虑高等教育的领导作用。PEI-MA将利用美国国家科学院的报告“STEM中有效指导的科学”，开发一个有效方法的工具包来建立指导网络，并将被设计成跨STEM领域扩展。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

The PROMISE Engineering Institute – Mentoring Academy (PEI-MA) will bring the concept of an “executive leadership program” to engineering graduate students. Executive leadership programs and similarly styled forums typically include the sharing of advice from experts, discussion of challenges and strategies for success, and cultivation of peer colleague networks. However, these coaching programs are often designed for, and offered to, career professionals who are already in leadership roles, and are on a track toward becoming executive leaders of organizations, e.g., CEOs, presidents, chancellors. The PEI-MA will bring this type of focused and impactful experience to graduate students. The program will expand executive leadership development models to offer facilitated mentoring and follow-up after the initial academy through virtual sessions and cohort-based conference experiences. The PEI-MA will put graduate students into a leadership ecosystem early, while they are still in school, and will expose them to accomplished leaders who are already university presidents. The PEI-MA will leverage the recent successes of Black engineering deans who have become university presidents, and will utilize “dean-to-president” exemplars as distinguished speakers for the PEI-MA to encourage the students to see themselves as future engineering leaders. The speakers will share successes, challenges, and advice for navigating the early career years of the professorial landscape and trajectories that led to tenure, leadership opportunities, deanships, and university presidencies, without ignoring cultural issues. Graduate student participants will have continued access to these presidents as short-term mentors in follow up, focused one-on-one sessions. The presidents will connect students to resources, supporters, potential employers, and other role models. Through mentoring from peers, staff, and exemplar presidents, the project seeks to build generational engineering leadership identity among the students. The program will be designed to foster this identity, value diversity, and build a mentor network that will encourage retention and pursuit of an engineering academic career pathway. The PEI-MA will share examples of roles and environments that provide opportunities to make strong contributions to science and technology, and leverage engineering and problem-solving skills for higher education leadership.The PEI-MA will be a partnership between the University of California Davis (UC Davis) and the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). UC Davis and UMBC will collaborate to pilot an engineering mentoring academy that tests a theory of change. The PEI-MA will have four activities that directly engage 24 graduate students, in cohorts of 12 per year, over a two-year period. Ten sitting university presidents from across the U.S. will serve as mentors, and the project team of university administrators will serve as mentor-facilitators. The PEI-MA will form a mentoring network or constellation that complements the experience that graduate students have in their home academic departments. The four activities will include: 1) a 3-day workshop in California with mentor presidents and mentor facilitators, 2) follow-up, individualized virtual sessions between graduate students and mentor presidents, 3) facilitated connections at engineering conferences throughout the year, and 4) a Summer Success Institute in Maryland that invites additional graduate students from the region to learn from mentors, and build peer relationships. The research questions will examine ways that the PEI-MA model: impacts career and leadership aspiration, forms generational engineering leadership identity, provides space to discuss difficult topics such as racism, and offers mentoring that suits the needs of students from traditionally underserved groups. The project will facilitate opportunities to cultivate future engineering professors who will have outstanding technical contributions, and consider higher education leadership. The PEI-MA will utilize the National Academies’ report, “The Science of Effective Mentoring in STEMM,” will develop a toolkit of effective ways to establish mentoring networks, and will be designed to scale across STEM fields.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.