LEGACY Fellow to Faculty Program

Intersectional Mentoring Networking Model — Adapted from the work of Walker, G. E., Golde, C. M., Jones, L., Bueschel, A. C., & Hutchings, P. (2009). The formation of scholars: Rethinking doctoral education for the twenty-first century (Vol. 11). John Wiley & Sons.

Leading Engineering as Agents of Change and Equity (LEGACY)

Founded by Ohio State College of Engineering Dean Ayanna Howard in 2021, the LEGACY Program (formerly known as the LEGACY Postdoctoral Scholars Program) was established to prepare and diversify the next generation of engineering leaders in academia. The LEGACY program is open to all qualified applicants regardless of racial or ethnic identity.

Why Ohio State

A unique feature of the LEGACY Fellow to Faculty Program at Ohio State is its focus on cross-cultural mentorship. Scholars and mentors will engage in authentic conversations that promote a culture of inclusivity.

Additional program features include:

Engagement with primary (i.e., research), secondary (i.e., teaching and service), and cross-cultural mentors (i.e., in areas of Fellows’ choosing)
Participation in a two-year cohort with other LEGACY Fellow to Faculty
Establishment of a community co-created by scholars
Professional development in areas of need for success as a tenure-track faculty
Formative and summative professional feedback about progress
After two years, transition to a tenure-track assistant professor position in the College of Engineering

2024-2025 Disciplinary Focus

Seven LEGACY Scholars, along with Program Director Monica Cox, stand outside. — Inaugural cohort of LEGACY Scholars

The College of Engineering’s Fellow to Faculty program will recruit top scholars and academicians providing innovative solutions, technologies, and problem solving for emerging co-designed physical and computational systems including:

Heterogeneous integration or advanced packaging of semiconductor -chips for the next generation of multidimensional electronic and photonic integrated circuits for electrification of transportation, renewable energy systems, AI, or other applications.
Cyber-physical systems, encompassing control theory, real-time and embedded systems, computing protocols, sensor networks, robotics, and machine learning applied to the integration of computational algorithms and physical processes; Foundational aspects and methods in Machine Learning;
Applications of machine learning in cybersecurity,
AI for materials discovery, design, and deployment,
AI-enabled inverse design tools that accelerate the discovery of advanced materials for improved performance and energy-efficient manufacturing.

LEGACY Scholar Tatiana Cuellar-Gaviria works in the lab. — LEGACY Scholar Tatiana Cuellar-Gaviria, PhD

Co-developed, personalized mentoring plan with targeted goals
Inclusion in daily aspects of engineering department cultures
Training in grants creation and management, research program development and career mapping
Internal and external networking opportunities to advance scholarship and professional brand
One-on-one coaching throughout experience
Formative feedback and updates in biweekly meetings
Annual mentor team evaluations