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This research category full paper explores National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program awardees from the Division of Engineering Education and Centers. The NSF CAREER Award distinguishes researchers as promising future leaders who are advancing the frontier of engineering education research (EER). Additionally, the multidisciplinary rise of EER has resulted in a diverse community of researchers from many backgrounds and academic departments. Given the recognition associated with the CAREER award, it is crucial that all early career faculty members possess the knowledge and support to create high quality CAREER applications. In this study, we investigated the educational backgrounds, institutional affiliation, and public abstracts of CAREER awardees to document prevailing patterns in recognition through CAREER awards. This knowledge informs future work to provide additional support for early career faculty planning on applying to the program. 

This research paper examines students’ perceptions of faculty and how it influences their identity trajectory. First-year students enter undergraduate engineering education with rich stories of how they came to choose engineering as a career pathway. Over time, the culture of engineering and network of peers, faculty members, and professionals shape students' stories and identity trajectories. How students “cast” faculty members in their story, often as helpful or hurtful actors, have implications for their identity trajectory, success, and, ultimately, retention in engineering. In this paper, we used two composite narratives constructed from longitudinal narrative interviews with 16 students to illustrate how students cast faculty into a role as either a support or an obstacle, based on their classroom experiences and interactions with them. This paper highlights the interactions that led these students to view faculty as helpful or harmful and explores the effects resulting: influence over student identity trajectory by fostering or hindering relationship building and networking, as well as influencing intellectual growth and personal ability beliefs.