ISTEP Speaker Series

About

The Speaker Series hosts renowned engineering education scholars, with the mandate of showcasing research related to one of ISTEP’s pillars: leadership, communication, socio-technical thinking or business and entrepreneurship.

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Academic lead Lydia Wilkinson presenting

Past Events

ISTEP Speaker Series Guest Katie Johnson

Illuminating the Sociotechnical in Engineering Education and Practice

Kathryn Johnson - November 12, 2024

I was trained as a technically-focused electrical engineer working on control of wind energy systems. Although I enjoyed that work (and still practice in that area), I began to realize that the world’s wicked problems, including climate change – a big motivator for me – require us to step back and think of large and messy systems sociotechnically. What does that mean, and how does it impact our work as engineering faculty, students, and practitioners?

In this seminar, I will answer these questions and connect sociotechnical thinking to concepts of macroethics and justice, as well as describing how sociotechnical thinking can help us to expand our engineering problem definition process so that we can support more sustainable long-term solutions. I’ll share experiences and findings in both the U.S. context and from my sabbatical at the University of Calgary in 2021. These include working with experts across not only various engineering disciplines but learning new skills, language, and norms through in-depth collaborations with social scientists and education specialists. I hope to spark your interests in seeing your work from new and broader perspectives, as well as give some insight into how to act on these new perspectives.

Speaker Biography

Kathryn Johnson is a Professor at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) in the Department of Electrical Engineering and is jointly appointed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). She received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Clarkson University and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado. She then completed a postdoctoral research assignment at NREL before joining CSM as the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor in 2005. Dr. Johnson conducts research in two areas: control of wind and hybrid energy systems and sociotechnical engineering education. Some of her recent projects include control of ultra-scale 25-MW and 50-MW wind turbines, control co-design for novel floating offshore wind turbine structures, and optimization of hybrid energy systems including generation, storage, and end uses. Her engineering education research centers on understanding and promoting macroethics and sociotechnical thinking within engineering education and was recognized in 2021 with a Fulbright Canada Research Chair in STEM Education award at the University of Calgary, Alberta.

Creating and using Role-Play Case Studies to Teach Computing & Engineering Ethics

Aditya Johri - February 13, 2024

The ethical impact of emerging technologies on society has become a critical concern for engineers as well as users. In particular, the effects of computing-based decision-making are being felt across domains including policing, financing, health, and education. How can we train future engineering professionals as both developers and users of these systems to have an ethical mindset that guides responsible creation and deployment of emerging technology?

In this talk I will discuss lessons from a four-year long project aimed at developing and implementing role-play-based case studies to teach ethics to undergraduate technology students. I elaborate on the creation of the cases, their use within courses, and their assessment. I will also present findings from a series of research studies conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the approach

Speaker Biography

Aditya Johri is Professor of Information Sciences & Technology at the College of Engineering and Computing at George Mason University (GMU), USA. He studies how technology shapes learning across formal and informal settings and the ethical implications of using technology. He publishes broadly in the fields of engineering and computing education, educational technology, and computer-supported collaborative work and learning. His research has been recognized with several best paper awards (CSCW, IEEE ETHICS, ICWL) and his co-edited volume, the Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research (CHEER), received the 2015 Best Book Publication Award from Division I of AERA. He served as a Fulbright-Nokia Distinguished Chair in ICT at Aalto University, Finland (2021) and is a past recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2009). His teaching and mentoring have been recognized with the University Teaching Excellence Award (2002) and Mentoring Excellence Award (2022) for undergraduate research. His edited volume International Handbook of Engineering Education Research (IHEER) was published by Routledge in 2023. He was awarded a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences & Technology Design (2007) from Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA.

ISTEP Speaker Series Guest Jonathan Rose

A look Under the Hood of Generative AI

Jonathan Rose - December 11, 2023

Generative AI systems are often described as having internal operations that are invisible or “too complicated” for non-specialists to understand. This (maybe deliberate?) “black boxing” of how deep learning systems make their decisions prevents many of us from truly engaging with the opportunities and challenges that Generative AI present.

 In this talk, Professor Jonathan Rose will start to lift that veil, exploring the mechanics and dynamics of the remarkable textual Generative  systems that have come to the fore over the last year.   While the black box is still there, it is worthwhile to know how it is trained, and the outer details of generation, and what appears to have caused the leap in capability. We hope this will help open a deeper and more informed discussion about what GenAI means for our current and future pedagogy, our jobs, and even our lives. 

Speaker Biography

Jonathan Rose is a professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering at FASE. Rose is a leading innovator in field-programmable gate arrays – prefabricated digital chips that can be programmed to become any digital circuit. His research has pivoted to the application of software and large language models in the service of mental health.

Between Education and Leadership: A Cross-Professional Perspective

Daniel Marom - October 12, 2023

In this seminar we will explore realities and prospects in the interrelation between education and leadership in various professions.  After presenting philosophical ideas on the role professions do and ought to play in society and human improvement,  I will make a claim as to the overriding significance of educational leadership in professions, delineate curricular and pedagogical implications for the training of such leadership and provide examples with regard to engineering, medicine, and psychotherapy.  We will then openly discuss this claim and consider how its possible relevance to the work of the seminar participants in their respective professions.  

Speaker Biography

Daniel Marom is currently a Research Fellow at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.  A founding faculty member of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership in Jerusalem, he led its curricular and pedagogical development over three decades.  In this capacity, he developed applications of the Mandel School’s training model for the education of educational leadership in other professions, including medicine, law, psychotherapy, social work, and clergy.  He was then recruited by the Technion to help develop educational leadership in engineering and is now developing various initiatives at the university and national level in this domain.

ISTEP Speaker Series Guest Susan McCahan

Transforming Engineering Education in Response to AI: Looking for Slide Rules

Susan McCahan - September 12, 2023

The emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence over the past year has brought awareness of the capabilities of this technology and AI more generally. One of the questions that often gets asked is: “will this technology transform, or displace jobs?”

It has been recently reported that Engineering, and specifically some Engineering disciplines, may be highly exposed to AI disruption. This talk will examine the analyses that lead to this conclusion, and what aspects of Engineering occupations are potentially vulnerable.

Speaker Biography

Professor Susan McCahan is the Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education, and the Associate Vice-President and Vice-Provost, Digital Strategies. In addition, she oversees the Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation (CTSI) and supports the administration of many of the major teaching awards and grant programs at the University.

ISTEP Speaker Series Guest Jessica Menold

The Cognitive Costs of Design: Exploring the Interactions Between People, Product, and Process

Jessica Menold - March 24, 2023

Design problems are marked by complexity, unknowns, and shifting requirement sets. Design itself is often taken to be a high-level cognitive ability. While the cognitive processes required to create, implement, and validate an innovative solution have been explored in previous work, the toll of such processes on designer cognitive state has not been identified.

This talk will review ongoing research efforts by the Technology and Human Research in Engineering Design Group to uncover the fundamental linkages between human designers, design processes, and designed products. This talk will review emergent research that demonstrates 1) the cognitive experiences of designers dynamically shift dependent upon the design task, 2) design processes and outcomes drive distinct rhetorical patterns, and 3) designers engage in distinct patterns of solution space exploration that are linked with design outcomes.

Speaker Biography

Jessica Menold is an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering Design and Innovation and the Department of Mechanical Engineering. She is the director of the Technology and Human Research in Engineering Design lab and conducts research at the intersection of engineering design, manufacturing, and new product development. Her current work focuses on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of new product development processes, integrating design thinking into engineering education, identifying the factors that contribute to or detract from the success of high-tech startups, and Design for Inspection in advanced manufacturing environments. Her work is dedicated to improving the design of engineered products and systems through evidence-based design methods, rapid prototyping, and performance analysis. Her work is supported by the United States National Science Foundation and the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Dr. Menold is also the Associate Director for Outreach and Inclusion at the Bernard M. Gordon Learning Factory, Penn State’s Makerspace.