C-SED’s Graduate Facilitator Program: Shaping the next generation of leaders in engineering education
Since 2018, the Graduate Facilitator Program at the Center for Socially Engaged Engineering & Design (C-SED) has been a launching pad for master’s and PhD students into their careers as innovative educators, engineers, and designers.
Story by Malin Andersson
C-SED trains graduate facilitators to present carefully-scaffolded explorations of socially engaged design topics and case studies in the classrooms of Michigan Engineering instructors.
Eight years into the program, C-SED Managing Director, Charlie Michaels, and Assistant Director of Experiential Learning, Claudia Cameratti-Baeza, reached out to previous facilitators in order to learn which experiences were the most impactful, publishing and presenting their findings at the American Society for Engineering Education Conference in 2025.
The positive feedback Michaels and Cameratti-Baeza received validated their observations that the Graduate Facilitator Program not only supports instructors, but also shapes the next generation of engineering & design educators.
What is the Graduate Facilitator Program?
C-SED’s Graduate Facilitator Program supports engineering instructors in integrating sociotechnical materials and, at the same time, offers valuable professional development for graduate students interested in teaching.
Through sessions that are designed for the specific needs of each individual classroom, sociotechnical topics such as engaging with stakeholders to design engineering solutions and analyzing the unintended consequences and broader impacts of certain design decisions are presented by trained facilitators.
In advance of the facilitation session, facilitators meet with C-SED staff to discuss every aspect of the course and the selected topic – from the goals of the instructor to the context of the participating students.
Shaping the upcoming generation of engineering educators
Inspired by positive feedback they received anecdotally, Charlie Michaels and Claudia Cameratti-Baeza decided to launch their own research on the program’s impact, creating and distributing a short survey to current and former facilitators who had participated in the program for at least one year.
The response rate to the survey was a strong 76%, with 19 out of 25 potential participants completing the survey.
The key takeaways are clear: C-SED’s Graduate Facilitator Program is highly effective in building confidence in teaching and facilitation skills, deepening understanding of sociotechnical engineering & design, expanding facilitators’ experience with pedagogical decision-making, and significantly enhancing our graduate students’ marketability in their careers.
Ultimately, the survey’s participants overwhelmingly agreed that being a C-SED facilitator contributed to their development as a designer, facilitator, teacher, and professional.
“Before working at C-SED, I was uncertain on how to combine my interests in psychology, engineering, problem solving, and making. C-SED proved that there is a need for curious, empathetic, creative problem solvers who like to facilitate, teach, strategize, and build community. Being a facilitator set the standard for what to look for… I consider it my first step on my career journey.”
“…it changed what I wanted to teach and how I wanted to show up for my students and be perceived as a faculty member. What types of content I wanted to focus on in engineering, not just technical, but the technical and social combined, and really furthered my ideas of design project possibilities on advising and incorporating ethics and sociotechnical knowledge throughout a curriculum, and being prepared to do that work in my career.”
After graduation, it is common for C-SED facilitators to go on to serve in instructor roles at other institutions or to pursue careers as industry leaders in a multitude of career pathways.
Interested in learning more? Check out C-SED’s published findings with the American Society for Engineering Education, or explore C-SED’s Graduate Facilitator Program page.