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This design case describes a Welcome Academy for New Faculty in Engineering. To situate the design, this work is motivated by the documented need to make STEM education more inclusive. This need has prompted extensive research on best practices for inclusive teaching, but less is known about how to translate that research into actual teaching practice. This design case addresses that difficulty. Influenced by Thaler and Sunstein’s theory of nudging, the Welcome Academy resets the default to expect inclusive teaching. To develop the design, we organized an off-campus summit to solicit input from current engineering faculty on the question, “What do new engineering faculty need to know about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)?” That input guided the creation of a four-hour workshop, delivered the morning after campus-wide new faculty orientation, that included an icebreaker, basic campus demographics, curated DEI-related resources, a campus tour emphasizing historical power dynamics, and presentations by current engineering students. To depict the experience of the design, we describe the final implementation, which varied from the design at points, and the unanimously positive feedback from new faculty. That feedback, however, was not the result of a flawless implementation: We also describe a number of failures that will improve subsequent iterations of the Welcome Academy, emphasizing the importance of communication, respect, and flexibility. 

In the College of Engineering, Design and Computing at the University of Colorado Denver, a faculty learning community (FLC) is exploring how to apply known pedagogical practices intended to foster equity and inclusion. Faculty come from all five departments of the college. For this three-year NSF-funded project, Year 1 was dedicated to deepening reflection as individuals and building trust as a cohort. Now, in Year 2, the FLC is focused on translating pedagogical practices from literature and other resources into particular courses. This cohort has experienced some adjustments as some faculty leave the FLC and new faculty choose to join the FLC. Since this cohort continues to grow, this paper presents key features that have supported the FLC’s formation and then transition to Year 2, as well as the design and implementation of a new faculty orientation, called the Welcome Academy, specific to new engineering faculty and practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Finally, drawing on the principal investigator (PI) team’s reflections as well as feedback from external evaluators, we provide our insights with the intention of sharing useful experiences to other colleges planning to form such FLCs.