The Purdue Engineering Dean’s Teaching Fellows program was established in 2020 to ensure that Graduate Engineering students have the opportunity to practice, establish, and implement their own approaches to teaching undergraduates prior to entering the academic job market. The initiative is a partnership between the College of Engineering, the Office of Graduate Education, the Office of Undergraduate Education, and the Schools of Engineering in order to enrich the mentoring and teaching experiences of outstanding Engineering Ph.D. students planning to pursue academic careers.

Students selected for this fellowship will shadow an exemplary faculty mentor, serve as the lead instructor of their own course, and employ instructional technology in their classroom or laboratory. The Dean’s Teaching Fellows utilize the pedagogy learned from an engineering education course to master new methods and provide their undergraduate students with the best experience possible.

Applications were received and reviewed in the Fall of 2023, which led to the selection of four Purdue Engineering graduate students to serve as the 2024 Dean’s Teaching Fellows: Somosmita Mitra (electrical and computer engineering), José Alfredo Ocegueda Barraza (industrial engineering), Ayush Rai (aeronautical and astronautical engineering), and Jie Zhu (electrical and computer engineering).