The Fellows

2023


Please join us in congratulating the 2023 Engineering Unleashed Fellows!


The 2023 Engineering Unleashed Fellows are a cohort of thirty faculty members from twenty-four institutions of higher education across the U.S., following a peer-selection process where they were recognized for their contribution to entrepreneurial engineering education.


These faculty members participated in the Engineering Unleashed Faculty Development (EUFD) National Workshop program, creating resources that will help them and intercollegiate colleagues advance the community's mission to integrate entrepreneurial mindset (EM) into practices that benefit their students, their institutions, and greater society.

To amplify the work of these Fellows and advance the shared mission, awards are provided to the awardee’s home institutions through the Kern Family Foundation. Each Fellow is an ambassador for entrepreneurial mindset and will work on a project through their institution with a grant award of $10,000. In total, the colleges received $300,000 in support to recognize the excellent efforts in engineering education by their faculty.

Meet the 2023 Engineering Unleashed Fellows

View all the 2023 Fellows cards.


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Dr. Adel Alhalawani

Assistant Professor, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Adel's first exposure to KEEN and EM was through the DYAL workshop, and his exploration of Engineering Unleashed and networking with other participants inspired him to innovate in his classes. He is already collaborating with faculty from multiple universities to design EM-related course projects and study their effectiveness. He published a second card that describes a new module in a biomedical course.




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Dr. Ahmet (Can) Sabuncu

Assistant Professor of Teaching, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Can designed a model PSS activity that has widespread application in a variety of courses - engineering and design-related alike. The use of a physical Stirling engine with failures and having students investigate iteratively is a creative method of teaching troubleshooting. He published an ASEE paper this past year describing this activity and the use of concept maps, and plans to continue developing the activity for low resource setting applications.




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Dr. Ashley Earle

Assistant Professor, York College of Pennsylvania

Ashley helped her students's thinking in a new way with her creative use of the Problem Solving Studio (PSS). Her short term goal is to now embed PSS in all the courses she teaches with the hopes that students see how working on the problem solving skills in one class will transfer to other classes.




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Dr. Deirdre Ragan

Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Honors Program, The Citadel

Deirdre came to each coaching session with ideas about her own implementation of the Problem Solving Studio, and with ideas about future implementations. She also gave excellent feedback to other participants.





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Dr. Ekundayo Shittu

Associate Professor and Interim Chair, Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, The George Washington University

Dayo is extremely passionate about this work and has done an amazing job infusing EML into all aspects of the project. His card should serve as a great source of inspiration for others.





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Dr. Elin Jensen

Chair, Civil & Architectural Engineering, Lawrence Technological University

Elin has fully developed an outstanding, adoptable project that integrates DEI and EM, clearly mapping the elements of the course project to the 3Cs. She has helped others in her institution adopt the strategies she developed. Elin is also using this work in an ASEE Mini Grant focused on the Engineering for One Planet Framework, which she is working to vertically integrate into all four years of their curriculum at Lawrence Tech.




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Emmy Tomforde

Instructor, Grand Canyon University

Emmy was very engaged with Problem Solving Studio coaching, and gave great feedback to others. She already has ideas for future iterations of the project she implemented.





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Dr. Gerard Capellades

Assistant Professor, Rowan University

Gerard has implemented a highly engaging and educational experience that exemplifies an open-ended PSS with difficulty levers and high engagement. A readily accessible children's Amazon kit and competition format transformed a topic like crystallization and optimization into an activity everyone engaged with and was excited to go the extra mile.




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Dr. Ghina Absi

Assistant Professor of the Practice of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Vanderbilt University

Ghina has been a very engaged participant throughout the meet up and follow on coaching, including organizing a group discussion at the 2023 KEEN National Conference. She is dedicated to providing opportunities in her courses for students to develop EM in her institution at large. She has been extremely thoughtful and creative in how to integrate DEI concepts from the workshop in EML.




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Dr. Huan Gu

Assistant Professor, University of New Haven

Huan has been committed to the new way of teaching via the Problem Solving Studio (PSS) since day 1. She already sees the change in her teaching and her students's learning. Starting with PSS sessions in the fall, she completely transformed her course in the spring to include 7 PSS sessions. She is hoping to write an IRB protocol this summer 2023 so she can collect data with the next academic year 23-24. Her dream is to have a similar format to Georgia Tech, in which students are exposed to PSS in at least one course every year until they graduate.




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Dr. Jennifer Monahan

Associate Professor, Saint Louis University

Jennifer is designing a faculty development and mentoring program for chemistry and engineering faculty at SLU. She is adapting DYAL workshop activities (e.g., values exercise, speed networking, prototyping, mentor map) that emphasize Connections and innovating her own activities.




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Dr. Jiehong Liao

Assistant Professor, Florida Gulf Coast University

Jiehong turned this EUFD National Workshop faculty development workshop opportunity into a wonderful, impactful implementation in the classroom that is adaptable and adoptable. Her card leverages an exhibit from the Colorado History Center visited during the workshop, includes 4 supporting videos, 2 activity handouts, a link to a book on The Culture Code, and links to 11 other KEEN cards Cards to view as further resources and examples of activities to consider incorporating when structuring scaffolded team and teamwork development. Jiehong has implemented and already iterated on this work in classes at her institution and already has plans to continue doing so next year.




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Dr. Krista Kecskemety

Associate Professor of Practice & Director of Fundamentals of Engineering for Honors Program, The Ohio State University

Krista designed an activity that embraces EML and inclusive teaching by encouraging students to explore underrepresented engineers and their unique contributions to society. Her passion to help her students see elements of themselves in exemplar engineers comes through in the design of this card. Additionally, Krista created resources that could easily be adapted by other instructors interested in EML, DEI, and character.




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Dr. Laura Christian

Lecturer, Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech Research Corp)

Laura executed at least 3 PSS sessions this past year in her cell and molecular biology. In one of these, she connected real life diseases to a sometimes dry/tedious topic like protein sorting and measured positive gains on her assessment as a result of the PSS. Her documentation of the activity with a respect to how to successfully implement PSS in the classroom with students is excellent.




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Dr. Lisa Murray

Assistant Professor of Practice, Western New England University

Lisa has already implemented an idea she developed as part of this workshop into her additive manufacturing class and has included student work from that course in her card. She has an accepted ASEE conference paper (work-in-progress) that she will present at the 2023 ASEE conference, and plans to run the module with improvements this fall in her intro classes, where she will be collecting data and submitting to a journal article.




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Dr. Lynn Dudash

Assistant Professor, University of Mount Union

Lynn designed an impressive activity for the Problem Solving Studio, and is already imagining future such exercises.






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Dr. Maureen Tang

Associate Professor, Drexel University

Maureen is focused on an area of great need for engineering education: Coming out of a disrupted education space in academia, it is important to identify students who are struggling and create pathways for them to succeed. Maureen has won a ELATES fellowship within Drexel to continue the work she has started that can be easily adopted in other engineering institutions.




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Michael Venuto

Adjunct Professor, Rowan University

Mike is extremely engaged and enthusiastic with integrating EML into his courses! He plans to expand KEEN/EML in his curricula, but also expand the dissemination of his work at partner schools.





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Dr. Michelle Marincel Payne

Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Among other things, Michelle used stories to promote learning and connection in her Thermodynamics class. Additionally, during the coaching session, Michelle went on sabbatical and was in a "real engineering" job. She's excited to gain this experience to bring stories back to the students to add authenticity to her role.




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Neal Ninteman

Associate Professor of Engineering and Associate Dean of Strategic Engineering Initiatives, George Fox University

Neal's work in establishing a robust industry mentorship program for senior undergraduate business and engineering students at George Fox is outstanding. Last summer he designed the IGNITE program, personally recruited 70 Industry Advisors (IA's), and set the plan in motion. To date there have been 1570 face-to-face mentoring meetups with IA's and students.




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Dr. Raymond Pugh

Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin - Platteville

Ray was super excited about incorporating EML into his Intro Chemistry class. By the end of the workshop he had essentially planned out the outline for the entire 10 week project. He has plans to advance that work and to integrate EM into his gen biochem course.





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Dr. Rebecca Reck

Teaching Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

Rebecca developed a new activity to help first-year engineering students build connections within their departments and bioengineering as a field. Her card was inspired by the field trip during the workshop and provides a great resource that can be adapted by other faculty at other institutions. Her other inclusive curricular activities include a different approach to having large class sizes of students present to each other. Rebecca has also led card writing parties.




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Dr. Robert Gettens

Associate Professor and Chair of Biomedical Engineering, Co-Director of the Engineering Fundamentals Program, Western New England University

Robert wanted to focus on reestablishing a positive culture within the College of Engineering, creating a space to cultivate just that. He was able to use a variety of methods (survey soliciting topics of gathering, book club discussions, interactive workshops, and software demonstrations) to invite faculty and staff to engage with one another to form connections.




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Dr. Serhan Guner

Associate Professor, The University of Toledo

Serhan implemented and created his card in one semester and continues to innovate and update his EM implementation. He is interested in overhauling his Statics course to both ensure EM integration and also address student achievement challenges in the course.





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Dr. Simon Ghanat PE

Associate Professor, The Citadel

Simon has presented his work at the 2023 KEEN National Conference, and is a champion for EM on his campus, offering seminars on how to get started with EM, and how to use and publish cards. He also took advantage of peer review for his card.





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Dr. Stephanie Wettstein

Associate Professor, Montana State University

Stephanie's short, EML focused activity is applicable for almost any design-related course at any student level!






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Dr. Thomas Zolper

Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin - Platteville

Tom is quite passionate about his extensive project that heavily integrates the 3C's and teamwork. It uses a real world scenario that can be adapted by anyone using the publicly available data for their state.





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Dr. Xiangyi Cheng

Assistant Professor, Ohio Northern University

Xiangyi is highly motivated to learn more about EM and integrate additional activities to enhance her students' learning. She is interested in expanding the work on integrating EM into her AI course as well as other courses.





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Dr. Yan Wu

Professor, University of Wisconsin - Platteville

Yan did a great job of absorbing the content from the workshop, applying what she learned to modify one of her existing courses, and ultimately produced a great card to share that work with others. She's very passionate about applying EML into courses with significant content on Ethics, and has already begun planning a module to start addressing that.




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Dr. Yufeng Lu

ECE Department Chair, Bradley University

Yufeng completely redesigned his Signals and Systems course using EML, and the accompanying card is rich with content to share. He is interested in continuing to evolve his other courses to have more EML content.

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