Intuition (often referred to as a "gut feeling") is a defining characteristic of experts developed primarily through experience. Practicing engineers regularly rely on their intuition in navigating their roles, but intuition is often discouraged in the engineering classroom. Our team is focused on characterizing the construct of engineering intuition and subsequently developing a means for measuring the construct. Our ultimate goal is to better equip the engineering workforce by providing engineering educators tools to create classroom activities that promote intuition. Our work on defining intuition is supported by an NSF RIEF grant. In addition to discussing the current status of our work, we will discuss our experiences with the RIEF program.

Bios

Dr. Elif Miskiolu is an early-career engineering education scholar and educator. She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering (with Genetics minor) from Iowa State University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Ohio State University. Her early Ph.D. work focused on the development of bacterial biosensors capable of screening pesticides for specifically targeting the malaria vector mosquito, Anopheles gambiae. As a result, her diverse background also includes experience in infectious disease and epidemiology, providing crucial exposure to the broader context of engineering problems and their subsequent solutions. These diverse experiences and a growing passion for improving engineering education prompted Dr. Miskiolu to change her career path and become a scholar of engineering education. As an educator, she is committed to challenging her students to uncover new perspectives and dig deeper into the context of the societal problems engineering is intended to solve. As a scholar, she seeks to not only contribute original theoretical research to the field, but work to bridge the theory-to-practice gap in engineering education by serving as an ambassador for empirically driven, and often novel, educational practices.

Dr. Kaela Martin began her academic journey at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, after receiving her PhD from Purdue University in Aerospace Engineering. She has implemented many pedagogical techniques in her classes including flipped learning, team-based learning, inquiry learning, and experiential learning. She is perpetually improving her teaching and enthusiastically shares what she has learned with others. She is passionate about research that has direct implications in the classroom, and her work aims to bridge the theory-to-practice gap. In her spare time, Kaela enjoys spending time outside whether it’s biking, hiking, or rock climbing.