From Cycles of Reform to Continuous Improvement: Engineering Education Research and National Competitiveness

In an every more globalized society, national competitiveness is of critical concern. As evidenced in recent legislation, there is an understanding of the critical role traditional science and engineering research play in ensuring the quality of our industrial base. However, there is much less understanding of the contributions of science and engineering education research could make to ensuring the quality of our human resources – increased capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship, deeper and faster learning, as well as better inclusion and use of the Nation’s diverse population. This series of brief presentations offer snapshots of the returns possible from targeted investments in engineering education research.

PRESENTER BIOSKETCHES

Dr. Maura Borrego an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech and the recipient of an NSF CAREER award to study interdisciplinary graduate programs in engineering. Dr. Borrego holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University. She teaches graduate-level courses in engineering research, assessment, and engineering education research, as well as freshman-level engineering courses. Her current research interests include interdisciplinary collaboration in engineering and engineering education. She is also the lead evaluator on projects focusing on faculty development, graduate teaching assistants, freshman engineering programs, and engineering diversity programs.

Dr. Debbie Chachra has been an Assistant Professor of Materials Science at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering since 2003. She has been involved in the design and rollout of the curriculum at Olin College, particularly in the development of the materials science and the bioengineering concentrations. Her research interests include diversity, immigration status, and persistence among engineering students, as well as the study of biological materials, models and therapies for osteoporosis, and mechanical interactions between cells and substrates. Prior to joining the Olin faculty, Dr. Chachra was a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, where she held a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada) Postdoctoral Fellowship. She received her Master of Applied Science and her PhD from the University of Toronto, both in materials science. Dr. Chachra holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science (Physics), also from the University of Toronto.

Dr. Norman L. Fortenberry is the founding Director of the Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education (CASEE) at the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). CASEE works with the engineering and science communities to research, develop, and deploy innovative policies, practices, and tools to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of systems for the formal, informal, and lifelong education of engineers – pre-K through gray. Dr. Fortenberry’s previous positions include managerial positions within the National Science Foundation, and as executive director of the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science, Inc. (The GEM Consortium). Dr. Fortenberry began his career as assistant professor of mechanical engineering and associate director of minority engineering programs at Florida A&M University/Florida State University College of Engineering in Tallahassee, Florida. Fortenberry’s doctorate, conferred at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is in mechanical engineering.

Dr. William A. Lucas is Executive Director at MIT of the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI). Since CMI’s start in 2000 he has been developing metrics for assessment of university programs with a focus on extending and testing a theoretical model of entrepreneurial intention to guide assessment of a range of entrepreneur education programs across the UK. He is also involved in supporting the use of the new assessment methods by US universities, conducting research on mathematics pedagogy and project-based experience in engineering education, and identifying organizational practices that increase the economic value of university research. He has been at MIT for 12 years, and his past career includes university teaching and research at State University of New York at Buffalo, a year as Visiting Professor at the George Washington University, six years at The Rand Corporation, and government service as the Associate Administrator of the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Dr. Fred Volkwein is professor and senior scientist as well as director of the Institutional Research Program at the Pennsylvania State University Center for the Study of Higher Education. He has a forty-year career as a researcher, administrator, and faculty member. He holds a B.A. from Pomona College and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. His teaching and research interests span the areas of academic program evaluation and accreditation, assessment of student learning and growth, state regulation and performance indicators, campus culture and climate, and administrative satisfaction and decision support. All his scholarly work is related, directly or indirectly, to the topic of organizational effectiveness and institutional research. He has produced more than 100 journal articles, research reports, conference papers, and book chapters. He currently is the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on projects in the areas of accreditation, engineering education, and training institutional researchers. For 11 years, he served as Editor-in-chief for the Jossey Bass series, New Directions for Institutional Research, and continues as its Associate Editor. He is a consulting editor for three other higher education journals. A recent winner of the AIR Distinguished Service Award, as well as the AIR Suslow Award for Distinguished Scholarship, he served as President of the North East Association for Institutional Research and also received its Distinguished Service Award. Dr. Volkwein is a frequent consultant in the areas of assessment, accreditation, and planning.

speech

STEM Caucus: Dr. William Lucas

From Cycles of Reform to Continuous Improvement: Engineering Education Research and National Competitiveness

Internships, Entrepreneurial Skills, and Technological Innovation

speech

STEM Caucus: Dr. Debbie Chachra

From Cycles of Reform to Continuous Improvement: Engineering Education Research and National Competitiveness

Design and Student Engagement: Some Gender Differences

speech

STEM Caucus: Maura Borrego

From Cycles of Reform to Continuous Improvement: Engineering Education Research and National Competitiveness

Engineering Education Research as an investment in National Competitiveness

speech

STEM Caucus: Introduction

From Cycles of Reform to Continuous Improvement: Engineering Education Research and National Competitiveness

Welcome and Overview