Future Faculty Program Course Descriptions

Meet Future
Faculty Fellow
Omar Abdelaziz

Omar Abdelaziz

Caption: Omar AbdElAziz

Omar Abdelaziz is a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering (ME), specializing in thermal and fluid sciences. His research interests include the modeling and optimization of heat exchangers and the production and utilization of sustainable energy.

Advised by Prof. Reinhard Radermacher, Abdelaziz became interested in the Future Faculty Program in order to foster his communication, teaching and research skills.

"To date, my best experience was through the teaching practicum," he says. "In that course, I applied all the knowledge I acquired throughout the first two FFP seminars. I learned the required efforts to become an effective instructor and gained good experience from class interaction and feedback from the students."

Future Faculty Resources

The program consists of a sequence of three one-credit training seminars, a teaching practicum and a research mentoring practicum. Typically, the participant will undertake the teaching practicum and research mentoring practicum after completing all of the training seminars. However, if there is insufficient time until graduation, the student can do one or both of the practicums in parallel with the final seminar. The program takes between three and five semesters to complete depending on the timing of the practicums.

Course Descriptions

Future Faculty Program Seminar I (ENES 601)
Introduction to and development of skills necessary to obtain and succeed in a university faculty position. Emphasis on technical writing and effective presentations. Discussion of research diversification, networking, ethics and professionalism.
Future Faculty Program Seminar II (ENES 602)
Effective teaching techniques. Basic principles of education and learning. Developing a course; promoting active learning, problem solving and critical thinking; designing exams and assignments; and communicating effectively with students.
Future Faculty Program Seminar III (ENES 603)
Developing a successful faculty research program. Establishing and maintaining a research group. Finding funding opportunities and writing grant proposals. Mentoring graduate students. Faculty position application process. Preparing research and teaching statements.
Future Faculty Program Teaching Practicum (ENES 604)
Future Faculty Fellow (FFF) to co-teach a course under supervision of a faculty mentor. FFF to be involved in all aspects of the course including development of a syllabus, presenting lectures, writing and grading examinations, and evaluating students in the course.
Future Faculty Research Mentoring Practicum
Non-credit activity. Future Faculty Fellow (FFF) gains experience providing research mentorship for either a less experienced graduate student or an undergrad doing a research project. FFF's tasks may include: providing guidance on selection of a research topic, helping mentee partition larger goals into manageable tasks, providing regular consultation on research projects, providing training on the use of specialized equipment, supervising software code development, critiquing written work. Further, FFF may be required to provide consultation on preparation of conference or journal submissions, and provide training in research ethics.

For more information about the Future Faculty Program, please contact:

Peter Kofinas
kofinas@umd.edu
(301) 405-7335