Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1457642
This article is part of the Research Topic Continuing Engineering Education for a Sustainable Future View all 11 articles

Continuing Education Program and its relationship with the Mental Health of Engineering Faculty Members

Provisionally accepted
Josué Omar Nava Manzo Josué Omar Nava Manzo 1Jesus Alfonso Beltran-Sanchez Jesus Alfonso Beltran-Sanchez 2Irma Marcela González Treviño Irma Marcela González Treviño 3Angeles Dominguez Angeles Dominguez 2,4*
  • 1 School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
  • 2 Institute for the Future of Education, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
  • 3 School of Medicine and Heath Sciences, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
  • 4 School of Engineering, Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Engineering education is complex and demanding. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a sudden shift from face-to-face to virtual teaching modalities, highlighting the need for robust university continuing education programs. This caused professors to invest more hours in attending training, which added to the stressors of the profession and those caused by the global situation and could add to the appearance of mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, stress, or burnout. This research aims to explore the relationship between continuing education programs and the prevalence of mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, stress, and burnout among faculty members. Utilizing a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional, correlational design, the study involved 307 professors from the School of Engineering and Sciences at a private university in northeastern Mexico. Tools included a burnout scale, a stress scale, an anxiety scale, and a self-report depression scale. Findings suggest that faculty members dedicate an average of 20 hours per semester to training programs. Although no significant gender differences in training hours were observed, perceived intensity differed with educational level and contract type, suggesting that continuing education programs impact faculty mental health variably. The study concludes a statistically significant relationship exists between stress, anxiety, burnout, and continuing education programs; but the magnitudes are too low to make generalizations. However, it was found that excessive time commitment is a factor that is detrimental to mental health; therefore, it is essential that training programs, in addition to meeting institutional and operational needs, also consider controls that promote the well-being and mental health of teachers. In this sense, continuing education programs contribute to professional growth and can also be a crucial component in the prevention and mitigation of mood disorders among teachers.

    Keywords: Continuing education, Anxiety, Depression, stress, burnout, faculty development, higher education, Educational innovation

    Received: 01 Jul 2024; Accepted: 12 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Nava Manzo, Beltran-Sanchez, González Treviño and Dominguez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Angeles Dominguez, School of Engineering, Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.