Work in progress - developing a certificate program for engineering faculty as leaders of academic change

There is agreement on the need for change in engineering education, but lacking are the motivation, knowledge, or skills to effect change. With that in mind, we held a workshop in June 2009 that sought to engage faculty members who are change leaders. Over the two-day workshop, we solicited their views on departmental and institutional challenges, the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) necessary for implementing academic change, and best practices for motivating engineering faculty to seek opportunities to acquire the necessary KSAs. We expected participants to identify and mentor change leaders on their home campuses. Following the workshop, we translated the participants´ views on the structure and content of programs they felt will be most successful into a program in academic change leadership. This paper describes how we distilled tacit and explicit knowledge from change leaders and leveraged that distillation to advance on-campus change as well as initiate the preparation of expanded cadres of change leaders. The information presented stemmed from discussions with engineering faculty who have implemented change on their campuses and includes lessons from their experiences and perceptions of the challenges they face.