Department: Mechanical and Materials Science
Email: matthew.michael.barry@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-624-9031
Office: 204 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: Interests include studying the effects of communities of practice on undergraduate engineering students, and the degree of which hands-on engineering and design fortifies learning.
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Department: Staff/Administrator
Email: mbsacre@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-624-9836
Office: 148 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: Mary's principal research is in engineering education assessment, which has been funded by the NSF, Department of Education, Sloan Foundation, Engineering Information Foundation, and VentureWell. Mary's current research focuses on three distinct but highly correlated areas – innovative design and entrepreneurship, engineering modeling, and global competency in engineering.
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Department: Civil & Environmental Engineering
Email: mbilec@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-648-8075
Office: 153 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: Integrating sustainability into the engineering curriculum through experiential and project based learning. Examining the connections between sustainability, diversity, inclusion, and equity.
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Department: Industrial Engineering
Email: kbursic@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-624-9837
Office: 1037 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: While some of my early research was focused on teaching design, I am primarily interested in what works in the classroom. I have published papers on the use of model-eliciting activities, active learning, and student response systems. I've also studied the differences between teaching analytics to engineering vs. business students. Currently I am developing an engineering economy concept inventory to be used to assess learning.
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Department: Industrial Engineering
Email: rmclark@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-648-5359
Office: B12 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: Dr. Clark conducts research on both externally and internally-funded education-related projects with faculty interested in enhancing and assessing instructional practices within their classrooms. Renee conducts both quantitative and qualitative assessment and evaluation and focuses on pedagogies for active learning, learner-centered instruction, and engineering professional development, including reflection and metacognition, simple active learning to drive interactivity and application, flipped classrooms, adaptive learning, design thinking, and game-based instruction. Another current research area for Dr. Clark is promoting the propagation of active learning in the Swanson School via a 2018 award from the Provost’s Office, in which she coaches and mentors faculty who have an interest in implementing or enhancing active learning in their classrooms, often for the first time. She is also a newly-appointed associate editor for Advances in Engineering Education.
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Department: Mechanical and Materials Science
Email: wclark@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-624-9794
Office: 218H Benedum Hall
Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: ahd12@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-383-4423
Office: 1203 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: Dr. Dallal primarily focus on education development and innovation. In particular, the use of active learning in electrical engineering and design based learning.
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Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: dickerson@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-624-22163
Office: 1206 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: Current focus is on the use of computer-aided simulation tools to improve student understanding of electrical and computer engineering topics. Most recent work is the development and study of a novel method for promoting reflective and metacognitive thinking in engineering students. Other topics of interest include studying the impact of simple-active learning, propagating active-learning among faculty, the intersection of entrepreneurship and engineering education and Internet-of-Things education.
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Department: Engineering Education Research Center
Email: aprila@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-383-6014
Office: B12 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus:
Dr. April Dukes is currently the Faculty and Future Faculty Program Director for the Engineering Educational Research Center (EERC) and the Institutional Co-leader for Pitt-CIRTL (Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning) at the University of Pittsburgh. Her current research and teaching efforts engage graduate students, postdocs, and faculty to inform and support systemic change toward excellence and inclusivity in higher education. April serves as co-PI of the NSF-funded Division Of Undergraduate Education (DUE) project, Increasing Implementation of Proven Inclusivity Practices in Undergraduate Engineering Education, and she is a collaborator of the NSF national educational research initiative, the Aspire Alliance. Throughout her professional career, April has mentored trainees at various stages inclusive and equitable practices, career development, educational research, and course design.
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Department: Civil & Environmental Engineering
Email: lmg110@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-624-1683
Office: 202 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: In collaboration with the EERC, I am studying how the incorporation of design thinking engages students in learning about sustainable engineering and design. We are collecting data in a long-term study to probe how this pedagogical approach enhances student creativity, retainment of content, and application to their future engineering careers. Continued data collection will enable us to further look at learning outcomes across gender, socioeconomic, and disciplinary diversity.
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Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: rjk39@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-383-5251
Office: 1224 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: My focus is in improving methods for teaching electric power and electromagnetic engineering through the use of active learning and design based instruction.
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Department: Bioengineering
Email: mahboobin@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-624-9819
Office: 302 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: My research interests include computational and experimental human movement biomechanics, bio-signal processing, and engineering education. Specific areas of biomechanics and bio-signal processing research include developing muscle-actuated forward dynamic simulations of gait (normal and pathological), analysis and modeling of human postural control, and time-varying signals and systems. Engineering education research includes curriculum and laboratory development of biomechanics and bio-signal processing concepts.
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Department: Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
Email: tbayles@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-383-9970
Office: BEH 909
Department: Mechanical and Materials Science
Email: imena@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-648-2134
Office: 147 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: First-year engineering education; academic integrity in first-year engineering students
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Department: Civil & Environmental Engineering, Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation
Email: david.sanchez@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-624-9793
Office: 153 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: My engineering education research includes identifying and tracking Sustainability student outcomes, student personal and professional formation as it relates to well-being, habits and culture, Academic Integrity
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Department:Industrial Engineering
Email: mdsherwin@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-624-9843
Office: 1027 Benedum
Department: Civil & Environmental Engineering
Email: lms162@pitt.edu
Phone: 412-651-6975
Office: 341 Benedum Hall
Engineering Education Focus: Lisa is a mid-career PhD student and aspiring faculty member. She has been an active member in Pitt-CIRTL since the summer of 2016 and recently earned the CIRTL Scholar Certificate through completion of a mentored teaching-as-research project (TAR) and dissemination of her findings at local and national conferences. Her project explored the use of active learning and the design thinking process in the engineering classroom to increase the practice of sustainability and creativity in students’ design solutions to a real-world sustainability challenge.
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Department: Industrial Engineering
Email: scs147@pitt.edu
Phone: 704-264-6415
Office: 1035 Benedum Hall
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Design and Playful Assessment of Engineering Ethics Through Game-Based Interventions
Ethics education has been recognized as increasingly important to engineering over the past two decades, although disagreement exists concerning how ethics can and should be taught in the classroom. With the support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program, a collaboration of investigators from the University of Connecticut, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University of Pittsburgh, and Rowan University are conducting a mixed-methods project investigating how game-based or playful learning with strongly situated components can influence first-year engineering students’ ethical knowledge, awareness, and decision making.
These games provide opportunities to educate young engineers on the importance of ethical decision making while in the field. This is a process called Gamification, which adds common video game elements into homework assignments, projects, and courses in order to peak students' interests and encourage them to engage with the activity. Mars: An Ethical Expedition, Cards Against Engineering Ethics, and Toxic Workplaces engage students using captivating stories, teamwork, scorekeeping, competition, and fun! More information can be found here:
Ethics Education Across Cultures
Ethics has long been recognized as crucial to responsible engineering, but the increasingly global environments of contemporary engineering present new challenges to effective engineering ethics training. With the support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) program, a collaboration of investigators from Virginia Tech, University of Pittsburgh, Delft University of Technology, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University are conducting a mixed-methods project examining the effects of culture and educational experiences on ethics training in undergraduate engineering students.
Engineering education has given insufficient attention to the global dimensions of ethics. Understanding how culture affects ethics could contribute to more inclusive engineering education. There are also implication for more effective responsible research education at the graduate level as the graduate population in STEM has become increasingly globalized and yet very limited studies are focused on designing culturally responsive ethics curriculum for graduate students with diverse backgrounds.
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