In this work, we present a detailed analysis on the faculty perspective on two specific pedagogical research questions: How can we alleviate the stress in undergraduate education and make education a more enjoyable and a productive experience for our students? How could we make the prestige of a Tier 1 university degree more accessible, inclusive, and ultimately more empowering? In an effort to answer these challenges, in Fall 2022, Software Engineering Technology (SFWRTECH) program at McMaster University's W Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology (SEPT) adopted the Residency Model of education. In this, the entire program has been transformed into a gradeless format of education. Specifically, the entire assessment schema has been transformed to promote self-learning, risk taking, discovery, and innovation, ultimately transforming the students into habitual self learners. For this, the the assessments in every course have been revised to include opportunities to re-learn and improve the performance, use novel pedagogies of challenge-based learning and research-based learning, with overall maneuvering in the direction of portfolio-based education that is more aligned with the W Booth School's vision of industry-centric hands-on training. At the end of a 14 week journey in each course, the students are required to demonstrate mastery over a predetermined set of competencies and skills through a variety of assessments to eventually earn a pass/fail grade on the transcript. This evolution of the assessment schema, that has only qualitative evaluations and feedback, is a major transformation for the faculty members. In this work, we present a detailed efficacy analysis from the faculty members' perspective and demonstrate that these measures have enabled us to offer a curriculum without negatively impacting the wellness of the students, supporting nearly 350 students annually in the SFWRTECH program. We present faculty opinion on students' competencies to engage in innovation and discovery, and be transformed into lifelong learners, ultimately producing industry-ready graduates.

Keywords: Residency model, faculty perspective, assessment schema, evaluation.