Natascha M. Trellinger

Becoming boundary spanners in engineering: Identifying roles, activities, and competencies

Engineers are increasingly acting as “boundary spanners” who coordinate, collaborate, and communicate across many different kinds of boundaries. The research project described in this work-in-progress paper is shedding additional light on this trend by responding to two main research questions: 1) What specific boundary spanning roles, activities, and competencies are most important and prevalent for early career engineers, and 2) How do early career engineers experience boundary spanning challenges? One major goal of this project is to generate a typology of boundary spanning roles, activities, and competencies for multiple engineering fields. This paper more specifically describes methods and reports preliminary findings for the initial phases of our research. The first phase involves a systematic review of more than 80 journal articles and book chapters on boundary spanning and related concepts using established procedures for literature meta-analysis. In this paper we summarize the major themes and categories emerging from this process. The second phase of the project involves semi-structured interviews with engineering students and early career engineers. In this paper we focus on our interview methods, including development and use of a “primer” document to familiarize subjects with boundary spanning. We conclude by discussing the implications of our work, especially in relation to leading-edge approaches for instruction and assessment.

Teaching pathways in the academy: A narrative study of engineering faculty at institutions with varying teaching and research activity

Graduate school is most commonly viewed as the entryway and the main site for socialization in the academic career of a faculty member. While faculty positions can vary widely by institution type, most graduate students are prepared for future academic positions during time spent at doctoral universities with very high research activity. However, the experiences of engineering faculty beginning their careers at institutions with varying teaching and research activity, i.e. institutions other than doctoral universities with very high research activity, remain understudied. The research project described in this work-in-progress paper details the plans to accomplish the following research objective: to document and describe the narrative accounts of the academic pathways and the teaching conceptions and methods of engineering assistant professors at institutions with varying teaching and research activity. This paper details the motivation, relevant literature, and methodological approach to a narrative research study that will specifically address two overarching research questions: 1) how do faculty experience the transition from graduate school and other previous educational and/or work experiences to their current faculty position?, and 2) how do faculty describe their current teaching conceptions and methods? In this paper, I summarize key decisions made while crafting my research proposal, including rationale for choosing narrative analysis and various validity considerations. I conclude with a discussion about potential implications of my work, including the creation of “inanimate more competent others” to assist graduate students making decisions about their academic pathways.