Gender has been the subject of study in engineering education and social research for decades. However, little attention has been given to transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) experiences or perspectives.

Professional Engineers spent over half of their working time doing leadership and other professional skill-related tasks. Engineering graduates, however, reported lacking leadership competencies to their employers’ expectations. They then must acquire these skills on the job to fill the gaps. Educators have called for innovative ways to introduce and impart leadership concepts to engineering students at all levels that do not further burden the already dense curriculum. Studies suggested that mentoring opportunities can provide an alternative approach for learning and practicing leadership.

The doctoral advising relationship has been deemed arguably the primary cause for doctoral attrition, holding particularly true for engineering doctorates where the advisor serves as a student’s collaborator, coauthor, supervisor, and often a mentor.

Engineers are tasked with designing, developing, and building solutions to complex problems. By nature, their decisions can have critical consequences. Avoiding engineering mistakes requires not only technical knowledge but also the ability to rapidly assess whether a solution is feasible and appropriate.

Black Americans have a lineage of excellence in engineering that pre-dates our American chattel slavery, yet this legacy of ingenuity is suppressed within engineering education in the United States. Even as institutions and organizations within the engineering education community promote campaigns to take action against racism, the violence of whiteness remains unacknowledged.

This talk will focus on three core topics associated with responsible conduct of research: research misconduct, detrimental research practices, and authorship and peer review.

Textbooks often depict the research enterprise as occurring in a linear fashion. But when we actually conduct research, we find something very different happens. There are fits and starts and lots of soul searching. We have to find our way through an uncharted landscape. But all people see is the end product, when the research is explained in a tidy paper. What is it like to undergo the research journey?

In this annual address on the State of the School, it is customary for us to reflect on where we have come, where we are now, and where we are going. This extraordinary pandemic year – more accurately spanning 18 months and counting – has brought us challenge, change, uncertainty and adversity that reveal much to us about who we are.