Preparing Future Faculty

The Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) program was designed and hosted by the Graduate School several years ago to support new faculty development as part of the graduate student experience.

Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) was originally started in 1993 by two organizations, the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Over one decade, from 1993-2003, funding support came from the Pew Charitable Trusts, The National Science Foundation, and Atlantic Philanthropies. The goal was to give doctoral students, some master’s (terminal degree) students, and post docs an opportunity to observe and experience faculty tasks and responsibilities. The goal also was to expose aspiring faculty members to different institutions and different student bodies, to get a better understanding of the different responsibilities and expectations of faculty. During that time, there were 45 doctoral programs and 300 plus partner institutions that implemented the PFF. The implementation involved three areas:

• Faculty roles and responsibilities
• Mentorship, focusing on teaching, research, and service
• Institution’s size, highest degree offered, student body

When the funding stopped, the CGS stayed involved with the PFF.

In 2010, CGS was awarded grant funding from the Teagle Foundation to assess student learning such as the PFF.

The Ohio State University Graduate School has been involved in the PFF movement for a long time, dedicated to helping graduate students interested in the professoriate to be well prepared.

Today, there are many opportunities for graduate students to ready themselves for the professoriate:

• The Graduate School, in collaboration with some other offices on campus, is offering an annual event each summer term, titled Preparing for the Professoriate. This workshop series is designed to help graduate students learn about the process of finding and applying for a faculty position.
• The Graduate School offers workshops exploring different higher education settings, from a community college to an R1 institution
• The Graduate School will, in Fall 2021, restart offering a revised PFF course.
• The Graduate School will host for the first time an immigration workshop for our international graduate students seeking sponsorship when accepting their first faculty position.
• The Drake Center for Teaching and Learning can provide a teaching endorsement (self-paced) for graduate students.
• The Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing engaged in training graduate students to present their research in 3 minutes or less to a non-expert audience