National Engineering Organization Names Rowan Prof President-Elect

On Apr 11, 2017

The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) elected Dr. Stephanie Farrell, professor and founding chair of the Department of Experiential Engineering Education in the Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering at Rowan University, Glassboro, president-elect in April. Farrell will serve a one-year term in that position beginning in June 2017 and then serve for one year as president.

Farrell has a long history of being an effective engineering education faculty member and is a champion of international collaboration. She has been an active member of ASEE since 1997 and previously has been elected twice to the Board of Directors, serving most recently (2012-2014) as vice president of Member Affairs and first vice president. She has received ASEE’s National Outstanding Teaching Award and ASEE’s National Quinn Award for Engineering Education, and she was elected a Fellow of the Society in 2015.

“ASEE has been an important part of my career and plays an essential role in shaping engineering and engineering technology education across the nation and, more and more, around the world,” said Farrell. “In an era when educators are thinking carefully about how we properly educate the engineers who will tackle the global grand challenges of the coming century, ASEE can be very influential. I am honored to be chosen as president-elect.”

In 2014-2015, Farrell was a Fulbright Scholar in Engineering Education at the Dublin Institute of Technology. Since 2012, she has served on the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies and has worked to promote engineering education around the world. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Indo Universal Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) and is committed to the diffusion of educational innovation and research-based instructional practice in India. She currently is working to expand the impact of IUCEE’s work and played a key role in launching K-IUCEE in Kazakhstan.

Among her initiatives, Farrell is leading a national team working under a National Science Foundation EAGER (Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research) award hosted by ASEE for the project titled “Promoting LGBTQ Equality in Engineering Through Virtual Communities of Practice.”  This groundbreaking project has generated knowledge about barriers and inclusion strategies and has brought Safe Zone Ally training to STEM professionals via webinars and workshops at national meetings, equiping hundreds of allies to foster inclusive environments for LGBTQ individuals in academia and industry.

Farrell received her B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania, her M.S. from the Stevens Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, all in chemical engineering. She was a faculty member in Chemical Engineering at Louisiana Tech University for two years before joining the new College of Engineering at Rowan University in 1998, where she played a key role developing the Chemical Engineering program. She was in the Department of Chemical Engineering until 2017, when she launched the Department of Experiential Engineering Education.

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