A Personalized Learning Model for STEM Graduate Education
Moving away from a “one-size-fits-all” strategy for graduate engineering students, the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering will create and validate a personalized learning model (PLM) for graduate STEM education. The approach will be piloted in Chemical Engineering, where the impact on both students and faculty will be rigorously assessed. The personalized approach directly addresses issues of inclusivity by removing barriers to participation by underrepresented minorities. The innovation of this project lies in the integration of its components into a department-wide model that can be translated to any STEM field, directly addressing a well-known challenge in the STEM community: diffusion of educational innovations.
In a press release from Swanson School of Engineering, PI Fullerton said, “Graduate students have unique career goals that most often do not involve becoming a professor – yet, that’s how we train them. Most of our students go into industry, not academia, and increasingly we have students who are passionate about starting their own companies, but the graduate curriculum is the same for all these students and professional development is not a priority.”
