A Purdue ENE assistant professor is studying how interaction with Legos and other building toys may help to enhance the spatial skills and shape the early engineering identities of young children. Ruth Wertz' National Science Foundation-funded project will use building toys such as Lego sets to examine the interactions between participants' expressed attitudes, family environment, and observed play behaviors.

An interdisciplinary team continues to investigate ways to enhance student learning and engagement in large lecture STEM courses. With NSF funding, Purdue ENE's Muhsin Menekse and colleagues from Purdue Polytechnic, the Department of Psychology, Google, and the University of Pittsburgh are developing and optimizing CourseMIRROR, a digital learning system that enables students to reflect in-situ via mobile devices, and helps instructors to capture the gist of reflections effectively via natural language processing.

Serving as the only faculty representative for the past two years on the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, Purdue ENE's Interim Head Edward Berger recently concluded his term. As a strong advocate for students and faculty at Indiana’s institutions, he brought to the commission his passion for classroom engagement as well as facilitated opportunities for experts to share best practices.

Purdue ENE Associate Professor Morgan Hynes co-organized a program this summer with Ivy Tech to boost high school students' interest in the semiconductor industry. 55 Greater Lafayette area high school students spent two weeks learning how to train on integrated chip fabrication, build a wearable sensor and program a robot, and design and fabricate their own printed circuit boards to measure the state-of-charge of a battery, and solder electronic components onto the boards.

The NSF-funded AAAS-IUSE initiative is pushing for an increase in XR (extended reality) learning environments in high school and college STEM courses. Purdue ENE's Assistant Professor Jason Morphew and his physics colleague argue that embedding XR platforms like the free MARVLS apps in STEM education can enhance students’ spatial reasoning and keep them interested in the sciences.

Purdue engineering students will get the chance to explore the liberal arts through experiential learning opportunities and invited speakers thanks to a new National Endowment for the Humanities-funded program aimed at better integrating the humanities and engineering. Purdue ENE Assistant Professor Kirsten Davis and colleagues from SLA and GEARE are developing the program, which will include three new courses: Humanities-Informed Engineering Projects; Engineering in a Global Context; and Technology, Science, and Humanities.

It is with great pleasure to present our 2022 recipients of the Engineering Education Outstanding Alumni Award, John Babb, Tamara Moore, and Roger Shively, graduates of the former Division of Interdisciplinary Engineering (now part of the School of Engineering Education).

What’s it like to be in the middle of developing a new framework for learning? This conversation between Dr. Ruth Streveler and Dr. Emily Dringenberg took place during the development of a socially-embedded framework for learning.

"I'm an EMT and First Responder. Can I help?" Those words came from First-Year Engineering student Lee Haglid from Ridgewood, New Jersey, who knew exactly what to do when classmate Aytaj Aslanli was injured by a fallen tree branch last week. Lee jumped into action and helped Aytaj until Purdue paramedics arrived on the scene.

Dr. Joyce Main, Associate Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University, and colleague Allison Griffith from Wake Forest University were awarded top honors this week for their American Society for Engineering Education paper, "The Impact of Math and Science Remedial Education on Engineering Major Choice, Degree Attainment, and Time to Degree."

In preparation for this award, Dr. Bill Oakes, 150th Anniversary Professor, Director of the EPICS Program, and Professor of Engineering Education, shared with us his rationale statement written for Phil's nomination. While there are numerous supporting letters detailing his mentorship and innovative work, we asked Dr. Oakes if we could share his rationale with our readers, as it explains what a lifetime of achievements looks like for a much deserving individual.

The awards committee of ASEE ChED and Chemical Engineering Education awarded Drs. Allison Godwin, Donna Riley, and Stephanie Farrell of Rowan University the William H. Corcoran Award for best paper in the journal in 2021, titled “A Sociocultural Learning Framework for Inclusive Pedagogy in Engineering.”

The College of Engineering has reappointed Dr. Donna Riley as the Kamyar Haghighi Head of the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University.

Should we think of ‘smartness’ as a verb instead of an adjective? Host Dr. Ruth Streveler interviews Dr. Emily Dringenberg, assistant professor of Engineering Education at The Ohio State University about her research about deeply held beliefs.