KEENzine4

tenure and Promotion KEEN FACULTY OF THE YEAR Charles Kim of Bucknell University and Glenn Gaudette of Worcester Polytechnic Institute — two of KEEN’s Faculty of the Year honorees — are expanding the horizons of students and faculty alike through the creation of effective hands-on learning activities and engineering-related curricula. They have also been enthusiastic proponents of entrepreneurially minded learning by publishing academic papers, creating presentations for KEEN events, and conducting webinars for faculty. By sharing their successes with other faculty, the value of entrepreneurially minded learning has been enhanced as more students and universities reap the benefits. Faculty from around the country are getting noticed for the impact they are making through KEEN. These faculty members are part of many different initiatives — creating publications about entrepreneurially minded learning, leading webinars, improving curriculum, creating new competitions and extracurricular activities, and travelling to other universities. Through KEEN, I find myself talking with more schools, alumni, and practicing engineers. I think about their needs and find ways to interact and collaborate. The Network causes me to think twice about the types of projects that I work on. Even within my scholarship, am I creating value? Am I looking for connections? Am I thinking about my students in the long run? The goal of the IDEAS 1 courses and K-WIDE 2 I’ve helped create are not just to provide hands-on experience, but also to develop “heads-on” awareness. Students think very deeply about the significance of what they’re doing. Naturally they want to make stuff, but translating that into creating value for stakeholders is one of the cornerstones of what we do in these courses.   — Charles Kim, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Bucknell University 1 Interdisciplinary Design Entrepreneurship Applications and Systems (IDEAS) 2 KEENWinter Interdisciplinary Design Experience (K-WIDE) When I first introduced entrepreneurially minded learning to WPI, people were initially looking at me like I was a superstar, but I was just reciting what I learned from faculty within the Network. KEEN has helped me become a much better teacher. The entrepreneurial mindset is instilled in me as a person and as a researcher. Now I’m leading a team at WPI to implement a new program on campus called "Developing the Entrepreneurial Engineer." It’s designed to infuse the undergraduate experience with entrepreneurial mindset. One of my favorite reviews has been, “It’s fun to teach again!” When you have your colleagues telling you that, you know that things are working well from a faculty point of view. — Glenn Gaudette, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute I’ve come to know my KEEN colleagues so well that it feels like some of them work at my university. I see them at academic conferences and we share common goals. I don’t know of a network where we share curriculum and assessment the way we do in KEEN. This was particularly useful when assembling my promotion portfolio. I needed five individuals from around the academic community to write letters of recommendation explaining how I contribute to the academic community beyond Lawrence Tech. My connections in the Network made this easy. People within KEEN knew me. These people had invited me to come to their universities and speak. For more than ten years, Lawrence Tech and the many KEEN institutions have worked together and collaborated on projects to the benefit of both students and faculty. — Andy Gerhart, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Lawrence Technological University The best advice I was given when I started contributing to the Network was from Pat Atkinson of Kettering University. He said, “If you want to become tenured, you have to make that clear to your university and make people aware of what you’ve provided that didn’t exist before you started. You have to add value to the university and they have to know that you did so.” As faculty, we are evaluated on three criteria: teaching, service, and scholarship. KEEN training helped me become a better teacher and instilled a desire to make EML an integral part of our coursework at Lawrence Tech. That broadened my knowledge and gave me the confidence to help coordinate curriculum revisions, develop design studios, and lead faculty workshops at universities around the county, aiding in my promotion. KEEN encourages us to share ideas and resources through the publication of academic papers. I’m grateful for the support I’ve gotten from so many different people and the experiences we’ve had working together. — Eric Meyer, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Lawrence Technological University When compiling my promotion package for review, I noticed that KEEN-related work often topped the list. I found value in KEEN workshops for my own faculty development. As service to my university and students, I trained other faculty in entrepreneurially minded learning and am happy to see the results. Several publications in collaboration with my KEEN colleagues have increased my scholarship. Just as we are trying to teach our students to seek new opportunities, I think faculty can find opportunities to grow in the Network. — Maria-Isabel Carnasciali, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of New Haven The featured faculty were selected for this page because they shared their good news with The Kern Family Foundation. Have you received a promotion connected to your work in KEEN? Let us know! Email us at keen@engineeringunleashed.com . 20 21 Is there a faculty member you would like to nominate for the KEEN Faculty of the Year Award? Submit your request to keen@engineeringunleashed.com . You can find the judging criteria at engineeringunleashed.com/keen/faculty-of-the-year.