Clemson University attended the 2018 NSF Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments (RED) Annual Meeting in Alexandria, Virginia organized by the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). The Glenn Department of Civil Engineering at Clemson University is one of nineteen NSF RED-funded engineering and computer science programs from across the nation. The select group includes programs at Purdue, Georgia Tech, Arizona State, Virginia Tech, and Rose-Hulman among others. Faculty and staff from all nineteen NSF-funded programs attended to share lessons learned from their transformation efforts. Sessions spanned from integrating diversity and inclusion in engineering education to building your program’s professional networks.
On the first day, all participants were guided by Elizabeth Bojsza from the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science to develop short, clear, conversational statements about what their programs are doing and why it matters. This was an inspiring presentation that reinforced the need to understand your audience and their preferences for receiving information. Jennifer Ogle, Clemson University Associate Professor, presented one of ten PechaKucha presentations in the Curriculum Change session. The topic of her discussion was the new CE-MENT peer mentoring program and mentor training for improved diversity and inclusion. On day two, all teams spent some time evaluating their team performance using Kotter’s model of Sustaining Change which was led by Matt Lovell, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
Finally, all teams presented posters on their respective change initiatives and engaged in enlightening discussions while making new connections for their programs. CJ Bolding and Jennifer Ogle presented the framework for the Clemson University Glenn Department of Civil Engineering. Other attending members of the Clemson team included Ron Andrus, Brad Putman, Russ Marion, Gemma Jiang, and Lisa Benson.
