2022 ASEE Board Election Results
ASEE members chose a new President-Elect and four new Board members in recent elections.
Their terms will start at the Society’s Annual Conference in June, unless otherwise noted.
President-Elect
Doug Tougaw (695 votes)
Kenneth W. Van Treuren (521 votes)
Doug Tougaw, dean of engineering at Valparaiso University, has been an active member of ASEE since 1997. He served as the Illinois/Indiana Section chair and the section conference cochair three times. Tougaw joined 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, and sat on it 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 cochaired ASEE’s Data Task Force. From 2017 to 2021, Tougaw was ASEE’s Vice President, Finance. Under his leadership, the organization regularly achieved a financial surplus after several years of financial losses, and nearly $1 million was added to the long-term financial reserve.
Vice President, Member Affairs
Lily G. Gossage (643 votes)
Christi Patton Luks (577 votes)
Lily Gossage is director of the Maximizing Engineering Potential program in the Center for Gender, Diversity & Student Excellence at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, College of Engineering. She has been an active member of ASEE since 2003 and currently serves as Zone IV Chair and the awards director for the Women in Engineering Division (WIED). She has been involved in various membership and community engagement activities and has held leadership positions in the Pacific Southwest Section as director, chair, treasurer, and WIED director. In addition to her ASEE roles, Gossage served as Director of Diversity Advancement for the Women in Engineering ProActive Network and held membership in NAMEPA—the National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates. Gossage has introduced a dozen individuals to ASEE and considers member recruitment and increasing participation of minorities/women in leadership roles among the efforts of which she is most proud.
Chair, Professional Interest Council I
Elliot P. Douglas (732 votes)
William H. Guilford (462 votes)
Elliot P. Douglas is a professor of environmental engineering sciences and engineering education, as well as Distinguished Teaching Scholar, at the University of Florida. An ASEE Fellow, Douglas has served as associate and deputy editor of the Journal of Engineering Education and chair of the Educational Research and Methods (ERM) Division. In 2018 he was awarded ERM’s Distinguished Service Award. Douglas has published and presented extensively on topics in engineering education and has been involved in faculty development activities since 1998, presenting workshops on active teaching methods and engineering education research. His textbook Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering: A Guided Inquiry helps faculty teaching Introduction to Materials easily incorporate active learning techniques into their classrooms.
Chair, Professional Interest Council IV
Kaitlin Mallouk (451 votes)
Beena Sukumaran (435 votes)
Bala Maheswaran (341 votes)
Kaitlin Mallouk is assistant professor of experiential engineering education at Rowan University and has been a member of ASEE since 2013. She joined the executive board of the First-Year Programs Division (FPD) in 2016 and currently serves 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. Mallouk looks forward to the opportunity to serve ASEE and its members by 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.
Chair, Professional Interest Council V
Peter Golding (490 votes)
Sheng-Jen “Tony” Hsieh (345 votes)
Rungun Nathan (341 votes)
Peter Golding is professor and undergraduate program director in the University of Texas at El Paso’s Department of Engineering Education and Leadership. He is the former chair of ASEE’s Minorities in Engineering and Systems Engineering divisions. Golding serves 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. Golding recognizes that early college high school, dual-credit programs, advanced placement, and two-year alliances with four-year institutions are essential to diversity and well-being in higher education today and in the future.
Society Leads Advocacy for Green Card Cap Waivers in Competitiveness Bill
A year-long effort by congressional leaders to invest in innovation, STEM, and increased US competitiveness is represented by two bills: the America COMPETES Act in the House of Representatives and its Senate companion, the United States Innovation and Competition Act. In March, ASEE wrote a letter to House and Senate Judiciary Committee leadership advocating for green card cap waivers within the competitiveness package. The Society also organized thirty-three scientific societies, professional organizations, and institutions of higher education to sign it.
At press time, Congressional leaders were negotiating the differences between the two bills. ASEE’s letter expressed support for Section 80303 of the America COMPETES Act and called on Congress to include the provision in the final competitiveness package.
If included in the final bill, Section 80303 would exempt doctoral and—in the case of critical industries—master’s students with STEM degrees from caps on green cards and streamline the visa process. The Society believes that, in doing so, the country will “strengthen our global competitiveness by making it easier for the best and brightest scientists from around the world to conduct their careers in the United States.”
The letter also advocates for expanding eligibility requirements. As currently written, the waiver would apply only to graduates of institutions with certain research expenditures or Minority-Serving Institutions with high levels of research activity, as determined by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Expanding the eligibility would increase the number of STEM professionals who could stay in the United States and “contribute to our innovation ecosystem.” As ASEE and its cosigners put it, “these requirements leave out talented graduates from many institutions across the United States and should be broadened to capture the full international STEM talent pool.”
Congressional leaders hope to be able to vote on the final competitiveness package by Memorial Day. As proposed, the legislation would not only help increase the country’s domestic competitiveness, ASEE’s letter explains, but also present an opportunity for investments in STEM education and the workforce. “The member institutions of ASEE and the other undersigned organizations greatly benefit from the talent, intelligence, work ethic, and diversity of thought that international faculty and students bring to their campuses.”
Go to www.asee.org/publications/NEWSLETTERS/news to read the full letter and view its signatories.
A Call to Methodological Activism
By Julie P. Martin, Shannon K. Stefl, and Amy E. Slaton
All research is political. By this we mean that all research occurs inside the social systems by which resources, rewards, and other forms of influence and security are distributed in our culture. No researcher—regardless of their topic or field—operates outside these social systems; no researcher sits above power or apart from its effects. If we researchers accept the reality that all research is political, we are then faced with the prospect of enacting research methods that address injustices.
We invite the engineering education research (EER) community to embrace a new paradigm of methodological activism, which leverages research methods to empower individuals and communities marginalized by systems of power in education. This practice reframes research with human subjects, shifting the responsibility for research ethics from bare-minimum Institutional Review Board requirements to asking researchers to authentically engage with their participants. Methodological activism is one step the research community can take toward greater racial equity, as, by design, this stance challenges the overt and covert ways that systems diminish minoritized groups’ presence within engineering and silence individuals’ voices within educational research.
Practically, methodological activism means that researchers seek to conduct research with marginalized populations, not on marginalized populations. Research with marginalized participants values their input and recognizes them as experts in their own experiences. Research conducted in this manner has some likelihood of benefiting participants, whereas research on participants “takes” data from them, positions the researcher as the expert, and situates the researcher as the primary beneficiary of the work.
Research on marginalized communities enacts violence because when we position ourselves as experts, we easily interpret realities through colonial, racist, sexist, ableist lenses that have for centuries aggressively erased the knowledge and experiences of communities and individuals outside of dominant Euro-American social systems. This is true even when we possess good intentions. To address this violence, researchers can demand that our professional community employ methodological activism by intentionally selecting questions, theories, and methods that challenge exclusionary structures and empower communities on which educational research is based.
Research questions are political because they determine which—if any—social systems are critically examined. For example, the vast majority of broadening participation research has been based in deficit thinking. We colloquially call this approach the “fix-the-student” mentality, which implicitly or explicitly blames marginalized students or their families, communities, or culture for their educational underperformance as measured by narrow metrics. Researchers using deficit-based research questions presume that marginalized individuals need to change in order to fit into educational systems, thus leaving those inequitable structures uncontested. Practitioners of methodological activism might select asset-based theories, counter or critical theories, or theoretical paradigms such as pro-Black or decolonizing theories. Further, researchers may explore theory, by clearly stating and clarifying its limitations, or develop new theory.
Research methods are political in part because they determine who is visible and invisible in data. Methods determine whose voices are heard and whose are ignored, and shape practices and policies that may result. We advocate for methods that empower research participants and their communities as authentic, equitable epistemic and political partners. We call for researchers to engage empowering methodologies already in regular use outside of EER, such as race-positive, feminist, queer, and crip heuristics, and to develop new ones as needed.
A first step in engaging in methodological activism is to deeply reflect on our own position as researchers in relation to systems of power, privilege, and oppression. We need to reflect on how our positionality influences every step of our work. We want to see positionality statements as standard components in all quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods published articles as well as in research proposals (the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, of which Julie is editor-in-chief, requires positionality statements for all manuscripts as a measure of accountability, transparency, and honesty). But this is only a starting point.
In every research effort, we hope the EER community will ask: Do we possess the tools we need to recognize our own politics and to enact politics that are more just? And are we using these justice-focused tools to their full extent?
This piece is based on the authors’ recent article, “Learning in Public and a Path Towards Methodological Activism: A Conversation on Equity Research,” in the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, vol. 28, no. 1. We borrow the concept of methodological activism from other scholars, namely Maria Ong (2005) and Tukufu Zuberi and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2008).
Julie P. Martin, an ASEE Fellow, is the associate department chair for graduate studies and research infrastructure at Ohio State University. As editor-in-chief of the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, her vision is to create a culture of constructive peer review in academic publishing. Shannon K. Stefl is the assistant director for the Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation at Clemson University. Her research centers around the well-being of women in faculty positions as well as inclusive teaching and research practices in STEM higher education. Amy E. Slaton is a professor of history at Drexel University and coeditor of the journal History & Technology. Her research focuses on the ways in which technical expertise and labor have historically enacted categorizations of race, gender, sexuality, and disability.
The pieces in the Year of Impact on Racial Equity (YIRE) series in Prism are solicited by the Commission on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and are under the editorial oversight of the Commission. Opinions expressed in the YIRE series are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of ASEE.
Call for Board Candidates
The ASEE Nominating Committee, chaired by Immediate Past President Sheryl Sorby, requests member participation in nominating candidates for the 2023 ASEE Board election. Board positions to be nominated are: President-Elect; Vice President, External Relations; Chairs of Professional Interest Councils II and III; Chairs of Council of Sections for Zones II and III.
- All nominees must be individual members or institutional member representatives of ASEE at the time of nomination and must maintain ASEE membership during their term of office. Nominating Committee members are not eligible for nomination.
- Candidates for President-Elect and for Vice President of External Relations must be active members who have served or are serving on the Board of Directors. Because ASEE is a Department of Defense contractor, candidates for President-Elect must currently be US citizens and undergo a security clearance. Candidates for Chairs of Council of Sections for Zones II and III will be selected by the members of their respective sections, as the ASEE Constitution stipulates.
- Each proposed candidate for a Society-wide office should submit a first-person biographical sketch of fewer than 400 words that documents career contributions, ASEE offices held, awards and recognitions received, and educational background. Include comments on leadership qualities, ability to collaborate with others to achieve objectives, and willingness to serve if elected. Self-nominations are accepted. For nominations for the office of President-Elect, please include a statement summarizing why you think your nominee is a good candidate for the position. A listing of members who meet constitutional eligibility requirements for the offices of President-Elect and Vice President, External Relations is available from the executive director’s office at ASEE headquarters.
Nominations will be accepted electronically at s.nguyen-fawley@asee.org. Please include a subject line that begins with the words “2023 Nomination” so that it can be forwarded to the Nominating Committee. Please be assured that your nominations are confidential and will be seen only by the senior assistant board secretary and members of the Nominating Committee. The deadline to submit nominations is June 1, 2022.
Nominations postmarked by June 1, 2022, will also be accepted by mail. Please mark the envelope CONFIDENTIAL and address it to Sylvie Nguyen-Fawley, Elections Coordinator, ASEE, 1818 N Street, N.W., Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036.
Members Encouraged to Support Constitutional Changes
ASEE’s 2022 Special Election Ballot will contain proposed changes to the Society’s Constitution.
The ASEE Board of Directors voted in February 2022 in favor of adding a Vice President for Scholarship to the Board. This addition recognizes the importance of scholarly avenues for our members and enables a strategic emphasis on this valuable dimension of ASEE activities. The definition of scholarship has expanded substantially in recent decades to include not only peer-reviewed publication and intellectual property but also multimedia or digital products (video, podcasts, etc.) as well as any future mechanisms of information transfer. The Vice President for Scholarship would steward ASEE’s leadership and growth in engineering education scholarship.
This position would oversee the Scholarly Publications Committee and serve as the key point of contact for all scholarly products with which ASEE is affiliated. Nominees for the office of Vice President for Scholarship would be selected from among persons who have served in an editorial capacity for one of ASEE’s journals—including those managed by divisions—as well as journals in closely related fields.
The electronic ballot to approve the changes to the ASEE Constitution will be open from April 4 to May 6, 2022. All voting ASEE members will receive an online ballot from ASEE’s election vendor, Surveys and Ballots. For all questions on the election, please contact Sylvie Nguyen-Fawley at s.nguyen-fawley@asee.org.
MOTION: AMEND THE ASEE CONSTITUTION AS FOLLOWS
Article III: ORGANIZATION AND OFFICERS
Section 1.
The Society shall have a Board of Directors composed as follows: President, President-Elect, Most Immediate Past President, Vice President Finance, Chair of each Professional Interest Council, Chair of each Institutional Council, Chair of each Geographic Zone Council, Vice President Member Affairs, Vice President External Relations, Vice President Scholarship and Executive Director (ex officio, without vote).
Section 3.
The Society shall have the following officers: President, President-Elect, Most Immediate Past President, Vice President Finance, Vice President Professional Interest Councils, Vice President Member Affairs, Vice President Institutional Councils, Vice President External Relations, Vice President Scholarship and Executive Director.
Section 15.
The Society shall have a Finance Committee composed of the President, President-Elect, Most Immediate Past President, First Vice President, Vice President External Relations, Vice President of Member Affairs, Vice President of Professional Interest Councils, Vice President of Institutional Councils, Vice President Scholarship, Executive Director, two individuals (they need not be ASEE members) appointed by the President who have a background in the management of financial matters, and the Vice President Finance, with the latter serving as Chair. The Finance Committee shall review budgets and make decisions on financial matters consistent with Board directives.
Section 16.
The Vice President Scholarship shall be nominated in odd-numbered years for a two-year term by the membership at large from among one or more nominees presented by the Nominating Committee of the Society. Eligibility for the office of Vice President Scholarship shall be limited to those members of the Society who have previously served as an associate editor or editor of an ASEE journal including ASEE journals managed by divisions—as well as journals in closely related fields.
Section 17.
The Society shall have a Long-Range Planning Committee, the chair of which shall be elected by the Board of Directors. The chair’s term of office shall be at the discretion of the Board.
Section 18.
The Society shall have an Executive Committee composed as follows: President, President-Elect, Most Immediate Past President, Vice President Finance, Vice President Member Affairs, Vice President External Relations, Vice President Professional Interest Councils, Vice President Institutional Councils, Vice President Scholarship and Executive Director (ex officio, without vote). The Executive Committee will act on and conduct such business of the Board of Directors as may be necessary between meetings of the Board and any other business which is delegated to it by the Board. All actions of the Executive Committee shall be reported to the Board of Directors at its next meeting.
Section 19.
The Society shall have a Risk Management Committee composed of a Chair and at least two other members, at least one of whom shall be a member of the Board of Directors. The committee members are appointed by the ASEE President and serve for staggered two-year terms. Members of the staff and the ASEE Vice President for Finance are ineligible to serve on the Risk Management Committee. The President, President-Elect and Immediate Past President cannot serve as Chair of the Risk Management Committee. The Risk Management Committee shall assist the ASEE Board of Directors in fulfilling its responsibility to monitor compliance with ASEE’s financial and human resource policies and procedures.
Section 20.
The President is empowered to appoint task forces, committees, and commissions, each of which will report to the Board of Directors through a designated member of the Board.
Task forces will be appointed for a short time, typically a year or less, and will focus on one particular aspect of the Society’s work. The result of a task force’s work will be a final report to the Board of Directors that typically includes recommendations for Board action.
Committees will focus on one particular aspect of the Society’s goals, but their work is typically ongoing. The result of their work will be regular reports to the Board of Directors, including recommendations for Board action.
Commissions will work toward achieving a broad aspect of the Society’s goals. Their work will be ongoing and will be directly relevant to most or all areas of the Society. Commissions will make occasional reports to the Board of Directors, and these reports may contain recommendations for Board action, but commissions are also empowered by the Board to directly act, engaging internal Society and external audiences, in support of the Society’s goals as they relate to the commission’s charge.
Section 21.
The Executive Director shall be appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the Board of Directors. The Executive Director shall serve as secretary to the Executive Committee and Board of Directors.
ARTICLE IV: ELECTION AND SUCCESSION OF OFFICERS
Section 2.
Each year, the Nominating Committee of the Society shall nominate one or more candidates for President-Elect. In scheduled years, it will nominate one or more candidates for each of the appropriate (Art. III, Section 7) Professional Interest Councils; each odd-numbered year, it will nominate one or more candidates each for Vice President Member Affairs and Vice President Scholarship for election in each even-numbered calendar year; and each even-numbered year, it will nominate one or more candidates for Vice President External Relations and Vice President Finance for election in each odd-numbered calendar year.
Section 5.
The nominees for Vice President Scholarship shall be individuals who have served as associate editor or editor of one of ASEE’s journals, including journals managed by divisions—as well as journals in closely related fields.
Section 6.
Newly elected Directors and the President, President-Elect and Vice President Finance, Vice President Member Affairs, Vice President External Relations, and Vice President Scholarship shall take office concurrent with the beginning of the Society year.
Section 7.
The President-Elect shall succeed to the office of President upon completion of a term of office as President-Elect.
Section 8.
In any case when the President of the Society cannot perform the duties of this office, the order of succession to the Presidency for the conduct of all or immediate business shall be as follows: the First Vice President, Vice President Member Affairs, Vice President External Relations, and Vice President Finance.
The Board of Directors may determine such incapacity to constitute a permanent vacancy because of death, resignation, or other valid reason, to which the order of succession set forth above shall apply.
Section 9.
In any case when the President-Elect cannot perform the duties of this office because of death, resignation, or any other valid reason, this office shall remain vacant until an election can be held. In such case the term of office shall be for the balance of the Society year.
Section 10.
In any case when the Vice President Finance cannot perform the duties of this office because of death, resignation, or any other valid reason, a successor will be appointed by the Executive Committee to serve until an election can be held.
Section 11.
In those cases where a procedure to fill a vacancy is unspecified, the Board of Directors has the authority to appoint an individual to serve the unexpired term.
Section 12.
By a two-thirds majority vote of all Board members, the Board of Directors can remove any ASEE Board member from office. Reasons for such a removal would include a violation of the ASEE ethics policy or violation of criminal law. The position will then be filled according to Article IV, Sections 8–11.
In Memoriam
ASEE mourns the recent passing of 1992 Fellow and Life Member Lawrence Wolf, whose globe-spanning career included leading the Oregon Institute of Technology as its fourth president. He was 83.
Wolf, who went by Larry, distinguished himself as an educator and engineer. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and a doctorate in structural engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, his hometown, he entered teaching as the founding member of the mechanical engineering department at St. Louis Community College. Next he served as an associate professor at the University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia from 1972 to 1974. He was appointed dean at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, directing a joint project with MIT in Iran before returning to his alma mater in 1975 as the associate dean of instruction. From 1978 to 1980, Wolf headed the department of manufacturing engineering technologies at Purdue University, Calumet, before serving for ten years as the dean of the College of Technology of the University of Houston. He also taught and helped develop academic programs in Norway, Nigeria, Singapore, and Japan. Appointed president of Oregon Tech in 1991, Wolf retired in 1998 as president emeritus.
A proponent of continuing education and research, Wolf worked with such industrial heavyweights as Chevron, Monsanto, and McDonnell Douglas. He spent a year at Boeing working on the 777 and did a sabbatical stint studying superconducting magnets as a visiting scientist at the renowned Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Wolf, who enjoyed camping, biking, and other outdoor sports, was very active in ASEE’s Engineering Technology Council, serving as its chair and member of the ASEE Board of Directors from 1999 to 2000. He was recognized with the 1987 James H. McGraw Award, 1993 ASEE Centennial Medallion, and 2004 Distinguished Service citation. He was also a life member and fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, an ABET fellow, and a life member of the American Association of University Professors.