Fostering Student-Centered Learning: Exploring Faculty Well-Being and Emotional Exhaustion in Engineering Education

Developing learning-conducive environments and high-quality teaching is closely linked to faculty well-being and emotional exhaustion. Identifying factors that facilitate or hinder these psychological states is essential to fostering a healthy and productive work environment for educators. This study utilized a convergent parallel mixed-methods approach involving 281 engineering faculty members from a private university in Mexico. Data were collected using a scale for psychological well-being (with Likert-type responses from 0 to 5), a scale for emotional exhaustion (with Likert-type responses from 0 to 4), and two open-ended questions that allowed participants to describe key activities or situations related to these constructs. Quantitative data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and post-hoc tests with bias-corrected accelerated bootstrap sampling, while qualitative data were examined through content analysis based on primacy principles. The qualitative analysis identified ten categories: five contributing to well-being and five related to emotional exhaustion. The categories contributing to well-being included growth opportunities, institutional support, and positive interpersonal relationships, while categories related to exhaustion involved excessive workload, administrative demands, and curricular changes. Quantitatively, the findings indicate that faculty perceive a moderate level of psychological well-being <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$(\mathrm{m}= 3.18, SD =0.40)$</tex> with no statistically significant differences across well-being categories <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$(\mathrm{F}=0.08,\ \mathrm{p}=0.989,\ \eta^{2}=0.001)$</tex>, Conversely, emotional exhaustion levels were also moderate <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$(\mathrm{m}=1.89, SD = 1.04)$</tex>, with statistically significant differences observed among exhaustion categories <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$(\mathrm{F}=18.80, \mathrm{p} &lt; 0.001, \eta^{2}$</tex> = 0.21). The study concludes that while no single factor overwhelmingly promotes well-being, excessive workload and abrupt changes in educational models are significant contributors to emotional exhaustion. Recognizing these factors enables educational institutions to implement timely preventive measures and faculty development programs encouraging human potential and fostering a positive and healthy work environment. This study contributes to understanding the complex dynamics of academic well-being and burnout. It provides insights for educational institutions to create healthier and more sustainable work environments for their faculty.