Racial Equity Series: The Potential Influence of Engineering Education Leaders
By the ASEE Commission on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion leadership team
The ASEE Commission on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, with support from the ASEE Board of Directors, has designated the Society year 2021–2022 as the Year of Impact on Racial Equity (YIRE). Throughout the next year, Prism will feature a series of articles about the YIRE activities and outcomes, as well as other thought-provoking content.
Leadership comes in many forms, but in issues of racial equity, the impact of those whose decisions affect multiple entities or institutions cannot be overstated. Engineering deans and accrediting bodies, for example, can leverage their power and platforms to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Representatives from almost 250 schools have signed on to ASEE’s Engineering Deans Diversity Pledge, part of the Society’s increased focus on DEI. They “commit through specific action to provide increased opportunity to pursue meaningful engineering careers to women and other underrepresented demographic groups.” By signing on to the pledge, deans are “ensuring that our institutions provide educational experiences that are inclusive and prevent marginalization of any groups of people.” This is one step toward improving equity in engineering education.
Another step that engineering and engineering technology leaders can take is to work toward transformation within their own organizations and document measurable progress in diversity, inclusion, and degree attainment outcomes. ASEE’s Diversity Recognition Program spotlights achievements. Since spring 2019, 120 schools have received the Bronze, or first, level of recognition. Joining this group committed to greater diversity in engineering can help motivate change efforts, offer credit for positive action, and avoid potential negative consequences for eschewing important DEI work.
An opinion piece that University of Michigan Dean Alec D. Gallimore published in Inside Higher Ed provides an example of the type of leadership and visibility required. Not only did Dean Gallimore call on others to do this work in “It’s Time for Engineering to be Equity-Centered,” but he also shared ways in which Michigan Engineering is already building in equity values for students, faculty, and staff (bit.ly/3DEa0WX). We applaud these efforts and urge other leaders to follow the university’s lead.
Similarly, engineering deans from Big Ten universities sent a letter to ABET (bit.ly/3lG82iz) to emphasize the important role the accreditation body plays in making diversity, equity, and inclusion core values for all engineers and key components of success in the field. The letter touches on the importance of incentives and reward structures to help integrate DEI lenses into engineering programs and institutions. The letter also notes the crucial role of universities in exposing students to diverse perspectives. Higher education institutions expand the views of students and what they have previously considered their reality—one that might be far away from the racism that many traditionally marginalized students and engineers face. In response, ABET published its updated definitions of diversity, equity, and inclusion and released statements to support Asian and AAPI communities, anti-racism and justice, and commitment to positive change.
When engineering leaders and administrators speak up, they demonstrate that these issues are important from an institutional perspective and are part of strategic planning in their schools. The fact that the institution in charge of engineering program accreditation is also invested is another sign of the power of effecting change beyond impacted groups. This support needs to continue and be exponentially replicated at institutions influencing policy and leadership and driving the ways in which engineering culture is shaped.
ASEE’s Commission on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion leadership team is Jeremi London, 2021–2022 chair, Virginia Tech; Homero Murzi, 2021–2022 incoming chair, Virginia Tech; and Elizabeth Litzler, 2020–2021 chair, University of Washington. Contact them at cdeichairs@asee.org.
Learn More
Access more information about the Year of Impact on Racial Equity at https://bit.ly/378PSy6.
Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon Helps Increase Representation Of LGBTQ+ Professionals
in STEM
By Secil Akinci-Ceylan
Wikipedia is the world’s largest open-access encyclopedia; the English edition of the website receives more than 250 million page views a day. However, the resource suffers from a diversity gap. For instance, in a 2020 survey by the Wikimedia Foundation (the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia), 87 percent of the site’s editors self-identified as men. That’s down only slightly from 90 percent in 2011.
Limited data are available on sexual orientation of Wikipedia contributors, but a January 2021 taxonomy of knowledge gaps developed by the foundation’s research team noted “plenty of evidence of barriers facing this community. Surveys as early as 2011 showed that editors were being harassed about their sexual orientation.”
Efforts to address the Wikipedia diversity gaps have increased in recent years. One group of editors has launched “WikiProject LGBT” in an effort to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of LGBTQ+ topics and individuals.
In October, ASEE contributed with a virtual edit-a-thon. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the two-day event on October 8 and 11 aimed to highlight the contributions of LGBTQ+ STEM professionals. Participants received a list of individuals who either did not have a Wikipedia profile or whose page was incomplete, so they could add or edit the pages.
ASEE held the edit-a-thon in partnership with 500 Women Scientists, Out to Innovate, 500 Queer Scientists, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ LGBTQ+ Allies community, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and its IF/THEN Ambassador program.
Maryam Zaringhalam of 500 Women Scientists, an organization dedicated to making science more inclusive, facilitated the first day. She opened the session by sharing insights about Wikipedia’s five guiding pillars (https://bit.ly/3B6uWUK) and the power of editing the website’s pages. Zaringhalam pointed out the impact of a single editor who can create a profile and raise the visibility of the person featured, not only as a STEM professional but also as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. As examples, she pointed to Ben Barres, transgender neuroscientist and science equity advocate, and Ruth Gates, lesbian coral reef scientist and first woman president of the International Society for Reef Studies.
The event’s second part on October 11, National Coming Out Day, celebrated the contributions of the volunteers who participated in the edit-a-thon. During her keynote address, Donna Riley, head of the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University and ASEE Fellow, shared her own story, discussed how the visibility of LGBTQ+ individuals has evolved over time, and highlighted the importance of such representation. “Small acts matter,” she said, “and we may never know the difference that we are making in the lives of someone doing a Wikipedia search.”
Secil Akinci-Ceylan is a doctoral student at Iowa State University and graduate intern at ASEE.
The edit-a-thon was part of ASEE’s LGBTQ+ Advocacy in STEM project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. For more information, visit https://lgbtq.asee.org.
2022 ASEE Board Elections
Presented on the following pages are candidates for offices to be voted on in the 2022 ASEE elections. These candidates were selected by the 2021 Nominating Committee, chaired by Past President Stephanie Adams. The nominations were received by the executive director as required by the ASEE Constitution. The Nominating Committee believes that the candidates offered here are eminently qualified and deserve the close consideration of members. Additional nominations of eligible candidates may be made by petition of at least 200 individual members. Nominees so proposed must indicate a willingness to serve before their names are placed on the ballot. Write-in votes will be accepted for all offices. In all cases, a simple plurality constitutes election. The official ballot, which will be furnished to each individual member by January 15, must be returned by February 15, 2022.
Candidates for the Office of President-Elect
Doug Tougaw
Interim Dean of Engineering
Valparaiso University
Doug Tougaw is the interim dean of engineering at Valparaiso University. He received a bachelor’s degree from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and a master’s degree and PhD from the University of Notre Dame and joined the engineering faculty at Valparaiso University in 1996. He has received two university-wide teaching awards at Valpo, and he was named one of the 150 Most Influential People in Valparaiso University History in 2009. He also earned an MBA from Valparaiso University in 2005 and a master’s degree in higher education administration from North Park University in 2013.
His research interests focus on nanotechnology and engineering pedagogy, and he has published 75 refereed publications split almost evenly between the two areas. His team’s work with Quantum-dot Cellular Automata was recognized by the journal Nanotechnology as producing one of the 25 most influential articles published during that journal’s first 25 years.
Tougaw has been an active member of ASEE since 1997. He has served as the Illinois/Indiana Section chair and has been the section conference cochair three times. He has received the Outstanding Teaching Award, the Outstanding Service Award, and the Outstanding Campus Representative Award from the Illinois/Indiana Section. He has received the Outstanding Paper Award for the section conference three times and the Outstanding Zone Paper at the national conference once.
He has served as an officer in both the Engineering Ethics Division and the Entrepreneurship and Engineering Innovation Division. He also chaired two national ASEE committees: the first revised the Board of Directors Statement on Engineering Ethics Education; the second produced the first ASEE Code of Ethics.
Tougaw began serving on the ASEE Board of Directors as Zone II Chair in 2010. In 2011, he was appointed as one of three members of the inaugural ASEE Audit Committee (later renamed the Risk Management Committee). He served on that committee for three years, the last as committee chair.
Beginning in 2014, Tougaw served as an at-large member of the ASEE Finance Committee. He also served on the Awards Policy Committee and on a committee to review the finances associated with annual awards given by ASEE. He also cochaired ASEE’s Data Task Force, which examined the finances and data collection methods for ASEE’s Profiles database to ensure its viability and validity.
From 2017 to 2021, Tougaw served as the ASEE Vice President, Finance. In this role, he chaired the Finance Committee and worked closely with the President, chief financial officer, and executive director to ensure that the organization’s finances are secure and used equitably to support ASEE’s mission. He helped the organization to regularly achieve a financial surplus after several years of financial losses. Under his leadership, nearly $1 million was added to the long-term financial reserve, helping to ensure the Society’s future success.
Candidate’s Statement
I will never forget my first ASEE annual conference in 1997, which I attended after completing my very first year as an assistant professor. In particular, I remember attending the National Effective Teaching Institute, where I saw that teaching could—and should!—be much more than lecturing in front of a class of sleepy students. I’ve also never forgotten the feeling of community I shared with others who care as deeply as I do about the success of all of our students. That’s what ASEE means to me—a community of people who share my lifelong passion for educating students and helping them to achieve their highest possible potential. Like most of us, I am a member of several other professional societies, but none of them feel as much like home to me as ASEE does.
I’ve seen ASEE from almost every perspective: as a section chair, division chair, Board member, and Vice President. In each of those roles, I’ve learned a little bit more about what ASEE means to our members. I’ve met members who are enthusiastic leaders within their section, and I’ve met others who say that the annual conference is the one time each year where they feel most connected with their profession. I’ve met people who belong to many divisions and others who pour their heart and soul into a single division. In each case, I have also seen what an essential and irreplaceable role ASEE plays in their professional lives.
For the past seven years, I’ve worked with the dedicated members of the Finance Committee and the Finance Office to provide support to our divisions, sections, and councils. We have simplified our financial policies to make it easier for all volunteer leaders to have the information and flexibility they need to make the best possible decisions for their units. We have also worked very hard to help return ASEE to a sound financial footing after nearly a decade of losses. I’m grateful that the organization I love is once again building on a strong financial foundation.
My primary goals as President-Elect will be to ensure that ASEE is a welcoming and inclusive professional home for our current members and to find innovative ways to reach out to prospective new members. I will listen carefully and work collaboratively with engineering and engineering technology educators from all disciplines to help them see the benefits of joining ASEE. Most importantly, I will strive to be an ally to all members from underrepresented groups and to increase the diversity, equity, and inclusion of our Society and its leadership.
Throughout my career, I’ve been proud to call myself a member of ASEE, and I’ve done everything I could to help the Society grow stronger. I am truly honored to be nominated as President-Elect, and if elected, I promise to continue to work diligently on your behalf and for the future of ASEE.
Kenneth W. Van Treuren
Associate Dean of Research and Faculty Development; Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Baylor University
Ken Van Treuren, a professor and former department chair of mechanical engineering, has taught at Baylor University for the past 23 years. He currently serves as the associate dean for research and faculty development, a position he has held for 14 years. Prior to Baylor, Van Treuren served 21 years in the United States Air Force as a command pilot and finished his military career teaching for eight years in the USAF Academy (USAFA), where he discovered his passion for teaching. Van Treuren brings a variety of experiences to the classroom, having taught 31 different graduate and undergraduate courses in aerospace and mechanical engineering. He also serves as an ABET Program Evaluator in aerospace engineering.
Van Treuren’s interest in airplanes led him to study as a cadet at the USAFA, graduating as a Distinguished Graduate with a BS in aeronautics. He next studied at Princeton University on a Guggenheim Fellowship, earning an MS in engineering science, and eventually became a USAF pilot and flew the KC-10 and KC-135 worldwide for 10 years. He returned to the USAFA to teach aeronautics and was selected to attend Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Living in the UK and studying in a multicultural environment gave him an appreciation for the importance of diversity in engineering. Van Treuren returned to the USAFA with his DPhil in engineering sciences. After 21 years in the USAF, he retired and was drawn to university life because of his love for teaching and learning. His varied academic background, including international exposure, would give Van Treuren unique educational experiences upon which to draw as ASEE’s President-Elect.
Van Treuren has been an ASEE member since 1996. He has over 120 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, 54 of which were presented at ASEE conferences. An active member of the ASEE Gulf Southwest Section (GSW), he twice was the program chair/section chair (2009, 2021). He has received the GSW Outstanding Service, Outstanding Teaching, and Campus Representative Awards as well as several best paper awards. At the national level, Van Treuren was the Mechanical Engineering Division chair (2016) and remains active. He joined the ASEE Board of Directors as the Zone III Chair (2019–2021). On the Board, Van Treuren contributed to strategic and long-range planning for ASEE, and interacted with zone sections to encourage the section leadership. He served as the liaison between the sections and the ASEE Board of Directors, and, during this time, the number of section campus representatives increased and the Campus Representative Award process was formalized. Currently, Van Treuren is the Baylor University ASEE Campus Representative.
Twice, Van Treuren has received Baylor’s Outstanding Teaching Award. Nationally, he was selected for the SAE Ralph R. Teetor Award for Educational Excellence and the Boeing Welliver Faculty Fellowship. At the USAFA, he received the Outstanding Military Educator Award. He is also the Kern Foundation KEEN coordinator for Baylor. Van Treuren is an ASME Fellow, an AIAA Associate Fellow, and a KEEN Engineering Unleashed Fellow.
Candidate’s Statement
While teaching my first thermodynamics class, I knew I had found my calling in life. Developing young engineers was exciting and important. When I started attending ASEE conferences, I was amazed at the innovation I found there. Today, ASEE conferences continue to keep me, and countless others, excited to teach and make my classes more interesting and engaging for the next generation of engineers.
It is an honor to be considered for President-Elect. ASEE is the premiere engineering education organization; no other professional society is completely dedicated to this task. We must constantly hone our craft. Being around like-minded people at ASEE makes me a better educator.
ASEE is a leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Of course, our membership has differences, but these can become our strengths. While history shows we are not perfect, examining the past helps us understand the future. We must move beyond understanding to build on our commonalities. My graduate experience in England was transformational. Truly multinational. It is time to increase ASEE’s visibility worldwide. I desire faculty and students to be globally and culturally aware. Achieving diversity among student and faculty populations is a goal which will certainly makes us stronger. As President-Elect, I will build on our solid foundation.
Today’s academic environment is challenging. Students and faculty are recovering from isolation, and we need a safe environment for all. Mental health must be a priority. Defining the future workplace our students will face requires industry input. In partnering with industry, we can emphasize the skills our students need for success, such as critical thinking, creativity, innovation, emotional intelligence, and cultural competence. My longtime involvement in the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) reinforces the importance of these skills. Students are the future, and, as such, I would like to see more students attending ASEE conferences. Starting at local conferences, students see engineering educators differently, as role models for a possible academic career. Local attendance is a first step for students and new faculty alike. All should be encouraged to attend the national conference as well.
Improving outreach to engineering programs with no ASEE involvement will encourage them to see the value added by ASEE and provide their faculty an opportunity for enrichment. I would like to include more community colleges and two-year institutions in the conversation as well, as they are underrepresented. As education costs rise, more students will choose that path to start their engineering career.
During my two years on the Board as the Zone III chair, I participated in discussions on goal setting and strategic thinking. Our efforts must continue and be directed at topics that will enhance ASEE and support its mission. ASEE has a superb staff with its finger on the pulse of the nation, being in Washington DC. I would welcome the opportunity to work with the staff and the Board as President-Elect. I promise to work on your behalf as well and would be honored if I am given the opportunity to serve you.
Candidates for the Office of Vice President, Member Affairs
Lily G. Gossage
Director, Maximizing Engineering Potential Program, College of Engineering
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
As director of the Maximizing Engineering Potential program in the Center for Gender, Diversity & Student Excellence at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, College of Engineering, Lily Gossage provides management-level oversight for development, strategic planning, recruitment, and retention of minority, women, first-generation, low-income, and adult returning students. She is an adviser for the American Indian Science & Engineering Society, the National Society of Black Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers. A seasoned grant writer with 22 years in higher education, she has helped procure funding for engineering student success and developed academic interventions for addressing low-completion-rate engineering courses, including mandatory tutoring and early identification/monitored success programs. Outreach and recruitment efforts for low-income communities and narrowing the opportunity gap for minority students are at the heart of her advocacy. At the K–12 level, for example, she developed a unique residential program serving homeless girls and mothers.
Gossage has been an active member of ASEE since attending her first regional conference in 2003 and currently serves as Zone IV Chair and the awards director for the Women in Engineering Division. She has been involved in membership and community engagement activities in various ASEE divisions, including Equity, Culture, and Social Justice in Education; Educational Research and Methods; First-year Programs; International; Minorities in Engineering; Military and Veterans; Precollege Engineering; and Women in Engineering (WIED). In addition, she has held various leadership positions, notably serving the Pacific Southwest Section as director (2012–2014), chair (2015–2016), and treasurer (2016–2020), and as WIED director (2015–2017). In addition to her ASEE roles, Gossage served as Director of Diversity Advancement (2012–2014) for the Women in Engineering ProActive Network and held membership in NAMEPA—the National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates. Having introduced over a dozen individuals to ASEE, she considers member recruitment and increasing participation of minorities/women in leadership roles among her proudest efforts.
Gossage’s desire to help others evolved from her own life events and she attributes her leadership style, problem-solving skills, and empathetic listening skills to social-cultural experiences. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, she escaped the “fall of Saigon” in April 1975, in a harrowing trip that she and her family made on a barge in the South China Sea. After being rescued by the US aircraft carrier Midway, her family sought refuge in Guam before arriving at the Marine Corps’ Camp Pendleton. Understanding of how fear of persecution forces whole communities to flee their homeland has strengthened her sense of social responsibility. She joined the Peace Corps (1996), serving as a teacher in a village school in Eritrea/Northeast Africa. As the eldest daughter in a single-parent home—and first in her family to attend college—memories of war, family violence, the profound discomforts of growing up in poverty, and life in the village have given her invaluable insight into working with diverse communities. Her ethnorelativistic view helps her relate to and seek out goodness in all and sustains her enthusiasm for engaging individuals of all backgrounds.
Candidate’s Statement
Over the past few months, I’ve toiled over the idea of continuing my participation in ASEE. On September 4, 2021, the unimaginable happened: I lost my 16-year-old son, Aiden, to a driver who did not stop for him. My world as I knew it stopped. As I started the grieving process, I struggled with the simplest tasks, learning to live without Aiden day by day. I dreaded the prospect of returning to work and questioned whether I should even remain active in ASEE.
As I reflected on what has happened, in both my professional life as an educator and my personal life as a mother, taking stock of my 25-plus years in higher education (employed in the area of engineering student success, primarily involved with women-in-engineering outreach and diversity and inclusion initiatives) and 18 years’ involvement with ASEE, I feel a sense of gratitude. I’m thankful for being able to be a member of a professional society that helps inspire younger generations to be more than they believed they could be—an organization that is charged with “empowering students” and regards integrity, diversity, and inclusion as core values.
In our professional life, whether we admit it or not—and some of us may not even recognize this—we are the best versions of ourselves when our personal life is balanced and beautiful, when we have a strong sense of purpose. I have lived my entire professional life with the singular purpose of service to others, and it is how I raise both my sons. My professional work mirrors my personal life. Every single student, whether school-age or college-going, is like a family member to me, someone I want to help. Every single colleague is an important member of my human circle—and I always think of what I can do to make someone else’s day brighter. Perhaps this is the “mother” part of me that has driven my active participation in ASEE all these years, to speak out when others might feel uncomfortable about a particular situation, to console those who are frustrated with something, to listen and learn so that I can find a way to solve a problem. My greatest desire is to help create a world where everyone feels cherished and can experience success regardless of where they came from, regardless of their station in life. I submit my candidacy for Vice President of Member Affairs because I believe I can inspire others to serve in the way that I do—and that is with kindness and compassion. Ultimately, building real and authentic relationships with our membership is the driver of success in any organization. It just makes intuitive sense for me to lead in the way that I live my life fully. My son Aiden’s enduring presence is what helps me move forward and live and lead every day. Thank you for your support—and the opportunity to serve you and ASEE.
Christi Patton Luks
Associate Chair for Academic Affairs; Teaching Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Christi Patton Luks is associate chair for academic affairs and non-tenure-track professor in the Linda and Bipin Doshi Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at Missouri University of Science & Technology. She joined Missouri S&T in 2014 as an associate professor after more than 20 years on the faculty at the University of Tulsa. She earned a BS in chemical engineering at Texas A&M University and an MS in applied mathematics and a PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Tulsa. She has taught most courses in the chemical engineering undergraduate curriculum, including design and laboratory courses, and also teaches graduate-level courses in thermodynamics and mathematical techniques. Additionally, she has taught mathematics at Tulsa Community College and mechanical engineering at Oklahoma State University. Her outstanding teaching has been recognized with multiple awards at the University of Tulsa and at Missouri S&T. Her current administrative role focuses on student success and faculty development. She was chosen to be a Miner Master Mentor to the Missouri S&T faculty.
Luks is active in Engineers Without Borders and has worked on projects in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Honduras. She developed a series of Global Cultural Exchange luncheons to help guide her students to become an inclusive community and was recognized with the Missouri S&T Student Leadership Award. She is personally involved in advising multiple student design teams, currently working with the Chem-E-Car and Chem-E-Cube teams. In Tulsa, she advised the automotive design team for the Challenge X competition, receiving the NSF Outstanding Incoming Faculty Advisor Award. She has been recognized for her work advising students (Mortar Board Scotch & Smokes Award), service to the community (Medicine Wheel Award), and STEM outreach efforts (the Tulsa Engineering Foundation’s Tex Richardson Engineering and Science Guidance Award).
A fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Luks is an active member of the Global Societal Initiatives Committee and past chair of the Women’s Initiative Committee and Societal Impact Operating Council, and has worked closely with the Minority Affairs Committee on its scholarship program. She also has been active nationally and locally with the Society of Women Engineers. She is president of Omega Chi Epsilon, the national Chemical Engineering Honor Society, and works with the Association of College Honor Societies.
Luks has been active in ASEE since attending her first Midwest Section meeting in the late 1990s. She has presented or chaired sessions at most conferences since then and has received awards for best paper and best poster. She served as chair of the Midwest Section in 2008 and Zone III chair and member of the ASEE Board of Directors from 2011 to 2013. She was program director for the first Zone III meeting in 2015 and served as Campus Representative for five years while working at the University of Tulsa. She served in the Chemical Engineering Division chair rotation from 2014 to 2017 and as Professional Interest Council I chair from 2019 to 2022. She is the ASEE Vice President of Professional Interest Councils for 2021–2022.
Candidate’s Statement
I am honored to be nominated for the position of Vice President, Member Affairs, and excited to serve the ASEE membership if elected. I first learned of ASEE when I was invited to attend a Midwest Section meeting. The community was warm and welcoming, and the interactions were not along departmental lines. I made multiple friends there. As I learned more about ASEE, I was hooked. This was a professional society that felt like home and not like a competition. I became my university’s Campus Representative. In a few years I was elected to be chair-elect of the Midwest Section. After completing my leadership rotation, I was elected to serve as Zone III chair, providing an opportunity to work with the Gulf Southwest and North Midwest Sections as well as my home section. In that term on the ASEE Board of Directors, I saw that the responsibilities of the Vice President for Member Affairs closely aligned with my motivation for being a member of ASEE.
I continue to be an active part of the Midwest Section and encourage ASEE members to attend their section meetings. These meetings are less expensive and easier to get to than most annual conferences. In addition to professional development opportunities, these conferences present tremendous opportunities to foster relationships with colleagues at nearby universities, community colleges, and K–12 programs. I find that these meetings broaden my point of view beyond my discipline and provide tremendous insights for work on cross-disciplinary projects on my own campus.
I have served as my university’s Campus Representative for several years. This role is vital to introducing ASEE to all faculty. In fact, it was a Campus Rep who first invited me to attend a meeting. The work that Campus Reps do is critical to the growth of the Society. I would like to work with our staff to develop tools to maximize their impact without adding to their workload.
The Member Affairs role is an important example of how ASEE is working to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion in engineering at all levels. Working with the ASEE Commission for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, I would continue to bring attention to ways that we can be more inclusive in the recruitment of future students through our outreach programs, be more thoughtful in the design of our courses, and prepare students to continue the battle for a diverse and equitable workplace.
I am grateful to be nominated for this important role in our Society and, if elected, will work diligently on your behalf to fulfill the mission of the Vice President, Member Affairs.
Candidates for Professional Interest Council I
Elliot P. Douglas
Professor of Environmental Engineering Sciences and Engineering Education; Distinguished Teaching Scholar
University of Florida
Elliot P. Douglas is a professor of environmental engineering sciences and engineering education and Distinguished Teaching Scholar at the University of Florida. He received two bachelor’s degrees from MIT in 1988, one in materials science and engineering and another in MSE and music. He then received his PhD in polymer science and engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1992. He began his career by spending four years at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 1996, he joined the University of Florida’s Department of Materials Science & Engineering, where he conducted research on polymeric materials. While in this department, he served in a number of positions, including associate chair. In 2005 he began conducting research in engineering education, which became his sole research focus in 2012. In 2015 he moved to the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences, where he is the undergraduate coordinator, and joined the Department of Engineering Education when it was founded in 2019.
Douglas’s current research follows two threads. He uses critical approaches to question issues of power and privilege related to engineering practice. Within this thread, he is investigating cultures of inclusion in the engineering workplace and revising conceptions of engineering ethics to include social justice. The second thread considers cognitive aspects of engineering learning, particularly problem solving and critical thinking. He also conducts work on qualitative methodologies in engineering education research.
An ASEE Fellow, Douglas has served as an associate editor and deputy editor of the Journal of Engineering Education, chair of the Educational Research & Methods (ERM) Division of ASEE, and program director for engineering education at the National Science Foundation. In 2018 he was awarded ERM’s Distinguished Service Award.
Douglas has published and presented extensively on topics in engineering education. His textbook, Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering: A Guided Inquiry, provides faculty teaching Introduction to Materials a means to easily incorporate active learning techniques into their classrooms. He has been involved in faculty development activities since 1998, presenting workshops on active teaching methods and engineering education research.
William H. Guilford
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs; Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science
University of Virginia
Will Guilford is the associate dean for undergraduate affairs in the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, where he has been on the faculty since 1997. He has led on-campus and online engineering programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, ranging in scale from department to school. He served as the undergraduate program director for biomedical engineering at UVA for 13 years, the director of educational innovation for two years, and the associate dean for online innovation. Guilford is recognized for his research in molecular biophysics, particularly for force spectroscopy of intermolecular bonds and the mechanics of molecular motors in living cells. He also develops engineering solutions to clinical problems, such as preventing the spread of drug-resistant pathogens in clinical environments and improving laparoscopic removal of organs. During the pandemic he designed a nasopharyngeal swab that was produced at 75,000 units per week to meet the needs of the Commonwealth of Virginia and led an effort to renew thousands of expired N95 masks. His scholarly work in teaching and learning focuses on nontraditional metrics of learning, including psychometrics such as creativity and self-concept.
Guilford currently teaches second-year engineering design courses in biomedical engineering along with quantitative physiology, has extensive experience teaching in the first-year engineering program, and also has experience teaching biomaterials, graduate molecular biomechanics, and other subjects. Curricular innovations that were born from these experiences include intensively hands-on, skills-based courses in engineering design, a highly cited approach to learning technical writing through the process of peer review, and a Socratic approach to teaching engineering subject matter. Guilford, who also has a passion for experiential education and undergraduate research, oversees two fabrication facilities at UVA, both designed to support undergraduate education and experiential learning. He promotes undergraduate research as principal investigator of an NIH-funded program, BME Clinical Scholars, which embeds undergraduate engineers alongside third-year medical students for a summer to identify and solve clinical problems and to create novel case studies for use in biomedical engineering classes. He also founded and ran the UVA Beckman Scholars research program for nine years.
A member of ASEE for 17 years, Guilford has attended the Annual Conference for approximately 20 years. He served the Biomedical Engineering Division as program and division chair, leading a significant revision of the bylaws, and served as member-at-large for three years. He has thrice been awarded Best Paper and was recognized in 2020 with the Theo C. Pilkington Outstanding Educator Award by the Biomedical Engineering Division for “outstanding education, leadership, and research.” Guilford’s teaching and service to UVA was recognized with the Distinguished Professor Award, the Hartfield Teaching Prize, and the Harold S. Morton Teaching Prize for his excellence in first- and second-year engineering instruction.
Candidates for Professional Interest Council IV
Beena Sukumaran
Professor; Dean, College of Engineering and Computing
Miami University in Ohio
Prior to joining Miami University in Ohio as engineering dean on August 1, 2020, Beena Sukumaran had been a member of the civil and environmental engineering faculty at Rowan University since 1998. Before becoming an academic, she worked at Amoco and the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute on offshore foundations for deep-water applications. She obtained her PhD degree in civil engineering from Purdue University in 1996.
In her current role as dean, Sukumaran is having a positive impact on Miami University’s engineering and computing curriculum and how engineering and computing is taught to undergraduates. She is a tireless advocate for diversifying the engineering and computing profession by advocating for changes in the recruitment and retention of diverse faculty, staff, and students. She is also a proponent of inclusive pedagogical practices and examining systemic inequities in engineering and computing educational practices.
Sukumaran’s previous leadership positions include serving as Rowan’s vice president for research from 2018 to 2020 and as the President’s Fellow for Diversity and Inclusion from 2017 to 2018, during which she examined strategies to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion. She served as department head of civil and environmental engineering from 2010 to 2017. In 2016, she and her team were awarded a $1.92 million NSF Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments (RED) grant entitled “Revolutionizing Engineering Diversity (RevED).” The RevED grant looked at strategies to increase the representation of women, underserved groups, and ethnic/racial minorities not only in the civil and environmental engineering department but also in all engineering departments while simultaneously enhancing inclusion through curriculum design, teaching, and learning.
Sukumaran has been involved in various outreach activities to recruit more ethnic/racial minorities, women, and underserved groups into engineering. She served in various officer positions in the Women in Engineering Division of ASEE, including as chair, and has been a co-organizer of the Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity (ConECD) conference since its inception in 2018. Elected as an ASEE Fellow in 2021, Sukumaran is the recipient of the 2011 New Jersey ASCE Educator of the Year award, the 2013 Distinguished Engineering Award from the New Jersey Alliance for Action, the 2016 New Jersey Department of Transportation Research Implementation Award, and 2020 WEPAN Inclusive Culture and Equity Award.
Bala Maheswaran
Professor, First-Year Engineering Program and Electrical and Computer Engineering
Northeastern University
Bala Maheswaran received his MS and PhD in experimental solid-state physics and MSEE in electrical and computer engineering from Northeastern University, where he has taught for 20 years and currently is a senior faculty member in the College of Engineering. He has contributed to and authored more than a hundred original research and education-related papers and conference proceedings. He has presented papers and organized and presented workshops and panel discussions in several national and international conferences. His goal is to reform engineering education by moving away from the boundaries of traditional, classroom-based approaches toward project-, concept-, team- and skill-based and knowledge-integrated approaches using real-world situations in diverse and inclusive environments. He has taken numerous students to ASEE conferences to improve their educational experiences and has introduced them to the real professional world. His current academic interests include energy system innovation and experiential engineering education via innovation. His past research was on high-temperature superconductors, two-dimensional electron gas, and engineering physics education.
An involved member of ASEE since 2001, Maheswaran has contributed in various capacities. He served as chair, program chair, secretary, and webmaster of the Engineering Physics Division, and as member-at-large of the Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division. He also served on the Chester F. Carlson Award Committee, PIC III Best Paper Selection Committee, P–12 Committee, as a CDEI delegate, and on the Interdivisional Town Hall planning committee for the ASEE Annual Conference. At the regional level, he has served as the chair, chair-elect, secretary, membership chair, campus rep chair, graduate poster chair, and undergraduate poster chair as well as on the executive and organizing committees of the ASEE-Northeast Section and conferences, and on the Zone I executive and organizing committees. He is also the cochair of TASME (Technological Advances in Science, Medicine, and Engineering) annual conference and is the academic member and unit head of Athens Institute for Education and Research. He has led and helped organize several national and international conferences, including the successful in-person 2021 ASEE-NE during the pandemic.
A charismatic educator, Maheswaran has received several awards, including the Northeastern University First-Year Engineering Outstanding Teaching Award twice, the ASEE-Northeast Section Outstanding Teaching Award, and the ASEE Division Distinguished Educator and Service Award, and was a nominee for the ASEE National Outstanding Teaching Award and ASEE Fellow membership. At its 24th-year award ceremony, TASME presented an award in his name: “Dr. Bala Maheswaran Junior Faculty Award 2020 for Excellence in Science Education,” and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021. The Chinese Society for Engineering Education also invited him to be a keynote speaker at the 16th International Symposium on Science and Education Development Strategy at Zhejiang University.
Kaitlin Mallouk
Assistant Professor of Experiential Engineering Education
Rowan University
Kaitlin Mallouk has dedicated her career to teaching and supporting engineering students so that they can be valuable and successful members of industry and society. A member of ASEE since 2013, she found her professional home in the First-Year Programs Division (FPD), joining its executive board in 2016 and currently serving as past chair. She was the FPD program chair during ASEE’s 2020 Virtual Conference and in 2021 spearheaded a major revision of the FPD bylaws. She also was actively engaged in the First-Year Engineering Experience (FYEE) conference steering committee from 2017 to 2019 and served as cochair of the 2018 FYEE Conference held at Rowan University. In addition, Mallouk was honored to receive the Mara H. Wasburn Early Engineering Educator Grant from ASEE’s Women in Engineering Division and, in 2015, her paper, written with S. Bakrania and K.K. Bhatia, won the Best Division Paper for the Division of Experimentation and Laboratory-Oriented Studies.
Mallouk has a BS in chemical engineering from Cornell University and an MS and PhD in environmental engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Between undergraduate and graduate school, she worked for two years at Merck, where she supported the scale-up of the purification process for the HPV vaccine, Gardasil.
Mallouk joined the faculty at Rowan University in September 2013 as a tenure-track instructor in the mechanical engineering department, subsequently taking a full-time appointment in the experiential engineering education department, where she was tenured and promoted to assistant professor. Her roles have included teaching and developing curricula for Rowan’s multidisciplinary design course sequence, First- and Second-Year Engineering Clinics, and mentoring upper-level students in small research-focused projects. In 2018, she was named to the Rowan University Faculty Center Wall of Fame for both teaching and advising. She also conducts NSF- and foundation-sponsored research in the areas of faculty development; entrepreneurial mindset; and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Mallouk has been an active member of the Rowan Teaching Connection, a group focused on providing on-campus professional development in teaching; the Professors and Parents Faculty Learning Community, which advocates for official, transparent parental leave policies; and the advisory board of the Rowan University Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching. Most recently, she served as chair of the Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategic Plan Committee.
Mallouk looks forward to the opportunity to serve ASEE and its members in the role of PIC IV chair through advocating on behalf of PIC IV and its divisions, liaising with the ASEE Board of Directors, and facilitating an engaging conference program at the annual meeting.
Candidates for Professional Interest Council V
Peter Golding
Professor and Undergraduate Program Director, Department of Engineering Education and Leadership
University of Texas at El Paso
Peter Golding believes diversity drives innovation. A former chair of ASEE’s Minorities in Engineering and Systems Engineering Divisions, he seeks to help PIC V, the College-Industry Partnerships Division, Continuing Professional Development Division, and Cooperative & Experiential Education Division. Golding is on the Executive Board of the ASEE P–12 Commission on Engineering Education, dedicated to fostering lifelong learning excellence in engineering education from an early age. On ASEE’s NSF-funded grant team, he is researching a national framework for recognizing engineering and engineering technology instructional excellence and professional development.
The inaugural graduate program director in the Department of Engineering Education and Leadership at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), Golding presently is undergraduate program director. He also serves UTEP students, staff, and faculty through the Center for Research in Engineering & Technology Education (CREaTE) and the Center for Leadership & Faculty Development (CFLD).
Golding previously served UTEP’s College of Engineering as associate dean of academic affairs and engineering education research, and earlier was director of basic engineering for the civil, industrial, mechanical, and metallurgical & materials engineering departments. He is a University of Texas Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Awardee, a UTEP Academy of Distinguished Teachers member, a registered professional engineer (CPEng), and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Engineers.
Golding earned a BS with honors and a PhD in materials science and engineering physics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, pioneering solar energy research and development for practical applications in Victoria and the Northern Territory. Before joining UTEP, he worked in industry in Japan, advancing solar energy technologies. Golding also worked on sustainable smart cities and renewable energy technology development for the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and led industrial-scale renewable energy technology research projects at the University of Melbourne and Ohio State University.
Today, Golding leads an interdisciplinary science and engineering education research team, partnering with El Paso Community College and the region’s nine independent school districts–which serve 100,000 P–12 students. Students gain early awareness and robust preparedness for higher education undergraduate and STEM industry-sponsored programs. In the past 15 years, he has helped UTEP secure more than $50 million in research and sponsored projects, building STEM student professional capacities, engaging industry, and innovating cooperative and experiential practices in engineering education. Golding recognizes that early college high school, dual-credit, advanced placement programs, and two-year alliances with four-year institutions are essential to diversity and well-being in higher education today and in the future.
Rungun Nathan
Professor of Engineering and Program Chair, Mechanical Engineering
Penn State Berks
Rungun Nathan, a professor and program chair for the mechanical engineering department, joined the faculty at Penn State Berks in 2007 as an assistant professor and was promoted in 2012 to associate professor. He has over 25 combined years of increasing responsibilities in industry and in academia, including at the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), a telecommunications technology arm of the Indian government, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.), Bangalore, and Villanova University.
Nathan received his BS from the University of Mysore, a postgraduate diploma from the Indian Institute of Science, an MS from Louisiana State University, and a PhD from Drexel University. He worked in electronic packaging in C-DOT and then as a scientific assistant in the robotics laboratory at IISc. in Bangalore, India, and as a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania in haptics and virtual reality. His research interests are in the areas of unmanned vehicles, particularly flapping flight and Frisbees, mechatronics, robotics, MEMS, virtual reality, and haptics, as well as teaching with technology. He has ongoing research in brain traumatic injury, flapping flight, Frisbee flight dynamics, lift in porous material, and wound therapy. He is an active member of APS (DFD), ASEE, ASME, and AGMA, coeditor of ASEE’s Computers in Education Journal, and a reviewer for several ASME, IEEE, ASEE, and FIE conferences and journals.
Nathan has been a very active member of both the Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering Divisions of ASEE since 2006. He started as a member at large and then chaired the Mechanics Division in 2012–2013. He currently is chair of the Mechanical Engineering Division after starting as member at large in 2017. Nathan also has been an active member of ASEE’s Engineering Technology, Computers in Education, Educational Research Methods, Multidisciplinary Engineering, Experimentation and Laboratory-Oriented Studies, and Systems Engineering Divisions. He is currently nominated as a Program Evaluator for ABET.
Sheng-Jen “Tony” Hsieh
Professor, Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution
Texas A&M University
Sheng-Jen (Tony) Hsieh is a professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution and director of the Rockwell Automation Laboratory, a state-of-the-art facility for education and research in the areas of automation, control, and automated-systems integration at Texas A&M University. His research interests include designing technology for engineering education; cognitive task analysis; automation, robotics, and control; cyber manufacturing system design; and micro/nano manufacturing. An NSF CAREER Award recipient, he has been the principal investigator and principal designer for several learning-technology development projects, including the Virtual Programmable Logic Controller (Virtual PLC) and Learning Environment for Automated System Integration.
An ASEE member since 2002, Hsieh served as the 2014 program chair and 2015 division chair of the Manufacturing Division. He served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Engineering Education and as an associate editor of Industrial Robot, an international journal of robotics research and applications. He has 196 publications in refereed journals and conference proceedings, including 72 papers in engineering education.
Hsieh, who received a PhD in industrial engineering from Texas Tech University in 1995, has a passion for preparing students to succeed in a rapidly changing world by helping them develop job skills and providing industry and research internship experiences for all students. Throughout his teaching career, he has consistently emphasized opportunities for students to gain relevant experience. He has met with high-level managers and engineers from 26 US and European system-integration firms to learn more about their needs and to find out how to better prepare students for careers in automated system integration. He also has a passion for engaging undergraduate students in research. Over the years, he has mentored 25 students in undergraduate summer research programs and hired more than 35 undergraduates to participate in his funded projects.
Call for Award Nominations
ASEE acknowledges the exceptional accomplishments of engineering and engineering technology educators annually through its Awards Program. ASEE award winners demonstrate the best in engineering and engineering technology education through their commitment to their profession, desire to expand the Society’s mission, and involvement in civic and community affairs.
The nominations for the 2022 Awards Program open December 1, 2021, and close February 15, 2022.
Additional information can be found at www.asee.org/awards. For questions on the awards or nominations process, please contact Sylvie Nguyen-Fawley, ASEE’s senior assistant board secretary, at s.nguyen-fawley@asee.org or (202) 331-3516.
The awards that will be given in 2022 are:
- ASEE President’s Award
- ASEE Lifetime Achievement Award
- Benjamin Garver Lamme Award
- Chester F. Carlson Award
- Constituent Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Award
- DuPont Minorities in Engineering Award
- Frederick J. Berger Award
- Isadore T. Davis Award
- James H. McGraw Award
- John L. Imhoff Award
- National Engineering Economy Teaching Excellence Award
- National Outstanding Teaching Award
- Robert G. Quinn Award
- Sharon Keillor Award
- William Elgin Wickenden Award
- National Engineering Technology Teaching Award