REES Governing Board

 

The governing board has been elected. Some biodata is included below.

 

Caroline Baillie, Australia (Chair)

Maizam Alias, Malaysia

Maura Borrego, US

Robin Clark, UK

Erik de Graaff, Netherlands

Duncan Fraser, South Africa

Roger Hadgraft, Australia

Mario Letelier, Chile

Jennifer Turns, US

 

REES draft vision statement (discussed at the 2009 conference in Palm Cove)

 

Africa

Duncan Fraser

Biosketch: Duncan McKenzie Fraser is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Cape Town (UCT).  He is currently also Assistant Dean for Academic Development in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at UCT.  He holds the degrees of BSc(Chem Eng) (with First Class Honours) and PhD (in turbulent air flow) from UCT.  He has taught virtually every course in the chemical engineering curriculum, but recently has mainly been teaching design courses in process control, process synthesis, fluid flow and heat transfer.

 

Duncan has introduced a wide range of innovations into the chemical engineering programme at UCT, including collaborative study groups, the freshman engineering course, and problem-based learning, as well as being involved in curriculum development and accreditation across the whole programme.  In the past twelve years he has published 15 articles on engineering education (mostly on student learning) in peer-reviewed journals and 19 on his technical research (mostly in the area of process synthesis).  In 1996 Duncan was a co-founder of the Centre for Research in Engineering Education (CREE) at UCT, and from 2000-2005 he directed this centre.

 

Duncan has presented papers at numerous engineering education conferences around the world, and in 2008 co-chaired the ASEE Global Colloquium on Engineering Education.  He has also presented a number of workshops on engineering education, mainly in developing countries.

 

Duncan has wide experience of university engineering programmes in Africa and other parts of the developing world.

 

Statement: I feel that I would bring two important perspectives to the REES Board of Governors.

 

Firstly, I would bring a perspective of the educational needs and the issues facing engineering educators in the developing world.  This includes issues such as resourcing and limited approaches to teaching and learning.

 

Secondly, I would bring a perspective on educational research that focuses on qualitative examination of student learning at both an individual and a group level, including factors that impact on learning and ways to improve it.

 

I would seek to ensure that REES is an environment that allows for a wide range of perspectives to be covered, and also that it would be inclusive of those who have constrained resources that impact on their ability to attend such conferences.

 

Asia

Maizam Alias

 

Biosketch: Dr. Maizam Alias is an associate professor at the Technical Education Faculty of the Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM). She obtained her PhD from the University of Surrey, United Kingdom in year 2000 with her doctoral thesis on spatial visualization ability and problem solving in civil engineering. She studied civil engineering structures at the master’s level in the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for which she was awarded an MSc. in Structures in 1989. Her bachelor degree is also in civil engineering, BSc. in Civil and Structural engineering which she obtained from the University College Cardiff in the United Kingdom. She is currently holding the administrative post of the Deputy Dean (Academic and International) at the Faculty of Technical Education in UTHM. Prior to her appointment in UTHM, Dr. Alias was the assistant head at the civil engineering department in Ungku Omar polytechnic, Malaysia (until 1996) and the assistant director of the Community College Division under the Department of Technical Education, Malaysia.  In the year 2001, she was offered a teaching post in UTHM and she has been the Deputy Dean at the Centre for Graduate Studies before her current position.  She is on a number of committees in the University and has also been on the technical committee for a number of conferences organized in Malaysia.

 

Statement: As an academician who is very much interested in the way engineering education is evolving to meet the needs of society at large, I would like very much to see a more sustainable engineering education appraoch being implemented.

 

Australia/New Zealand (ANZ)

Caroline Baillie

Biosketch: Caroline has recently been recruited as Chair of Engineering Education for the Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics. Before coming to Perth, Caroline was Chair of Engineering Education Research and Development at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, where she was also cross appointed into Chemical Engineering, Sociology and Women’s studies. Formerly she was lecturer in Materials and Education development at Imperial College, UK and lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sydney, as well as Deputy Director of the Materials Subject centre, part of the Learning and Teaching support network in the UK supporting all materials engineering academics and Departments nationwide. Caroline has published over 160 peer reviewed journal papers and proceedings, 7 authored books and 11 edited books in Engineering and Engineering Education including practice and development, teaching and supervision, science and engineering knowledge development, education and social justice. Caroline has a background in engineering, as well as education, holding higher degrees in each area and she draws from her experience in the Higher Education research community, in Education Development as well as Engineering Education. Additionally Caroline continues to practice as an Engineer through her work for the not-for-profit ‘Waste for Life’ organisation and her technical Materials Engineering research. Caroline sits on the Editorial boards or advisory committees of EJEE, JEE, IJEE, EE (UK) as well as many engineering and education journals and committees and keeps well abreast of the major developments in the HE, EE and Education development communities, in Canada, US, Australia and Europe, as well as increasingly South America and Africa.

 

Statement: I would be pleased to serve on the REES Governing Board for several reasons. Having been involved in EE research for 16 years and seen its growth over this period, I believe that it is timely to support and enhance a global community of scholars in Engineering Education research through REES and would wish to make sure that such a body  is representative of the very many ways in which EE research has been developing in different countries and from different schools of thought and perspectives. Our first aim must be to broaden our connection with engineering academics within the different engineering disciplines and continents, especially from the Global South,  encouraging and building capacity in EE research. However, we can also increasingly connect with education developers,  educational researchers , science education scholars and we can draw from trans-disciplinary scholarship in sociology, women's studies and development studies etc. in order to develop questions and directions within EE research which are of importance and relevance to our future engineers. My own experience as an engineering academic in three continents and several different engineering disciplines, my experience, training and scholarship as an education developer and education researcher, my development work in Africa and Latin America and my connections to sociology and  women's studies would enable me to provide this global and interdisciplinary guidance. I would hope to facilitate debate about future locations of meetings, appropriate and diverse membership and participation as well as overall direction of REES to ensure that it becomes a truly Globally representative body.

 

Roger Hadgraft

Biosketch:  Roger Hadgraft is a civil engineer with more than 15 years involvement in improving engineering education. He has published many papers in the area, with a particular focus on problem/project-based learning (PBL) and the use of online learning technology to support student-directed learning. He was instrumental in introducing a project-based curriculum into civil engineering at Monash University, commencing in 1998, and at RMIT in civil, chemical and environmental engineering from 2002-6. Roger has consulted on PBL to universities both nationally and internationally. He has been a member of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) Executive since 2001 and was its 2008 President. He is the Director of the Engineering Learning Unit at the University of Melbourne where he assists in the introduction of the new Melbourne Model in engineering, supporting new project-based learning courses and new learning spaces and improving teaching quality across the Melbourne School of Engineering. He has also been involved in issues of sustainability for the last five years, introducing new undergraduate subjects and a Master’s program based on adult learning principles. He is one of two ALTC Discipline Scholars for Engineering and Technology in 2009-10 and is involved in several ALTC projects. He has a particular interest in identifying graduate attributes for engineers, teaching them through authentic learning situations and the use of appropriate assessment tools.

Statement: I see my role as providing representation for Australasia. As a recent President of AAEE and the Chair of REES 2009 and as ALTC Discipline Scholar, I am in a good position to have established the networks that puts me in contact with the relevant scholars in Australia and New Zealand. I am keen for REES to be globally representative and will work towards balanced inputs from the continents as well as an inclusive approach to growing the community through transparent and representative reviewing processes for the future conferences.

Europe

Robin Clark

 

Biosketch: Robin gained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at University College London and then spent 14 years working in industry, initially in the UK and then for 8 years in the USA. He started as and engineer developing techniques for the inspection of nuclear power plant and then transferred his attention to the inspection of railway vehicles and infrastructure. Whilst in the US, Robin gained an MBA and in 2000 became Vice President for Engineering and R+D at Sperry Rail Inc. Robin joined Aston University in July 2003 as a Senior Lecturer focusing on a newly created MSc in Engineering Management and performing research in the fields of non-destructive testing and project management. Robin spent 3 years as the MSc Programme Director and became a UK National Teaching Fellow in 2007. In 2008 Robin took on the role of Head of Learning and Teaching Research for Aston University and now focuses his research efforts in the area of Engineering Education, although his remit covers all disciplines at Aston. He leads a team of 5 researchers, currently has 5 PhD students and heads the Research module on the Aston Postgraduate Teaching Certificate for new staff. He is part of the SEFI Engineering Education Research Working Group and is the convenor of a UK Engineering Education Research Special Interest Group supported by the Engineering Subject Centre. Robin is a Chartered Engineer, Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

 

Statement: REES provides the global Engineering Education Research (EER) community with a forum for exploring key issues in a way that encourages the coming together of colleagues from a range of disciplines. This is a real strength that I believe needs to be built on in future years. This diverse community will all learn from each other, identify collaborative opportunities and promote research of the highest quality. This research then becomes a key factor in guiding policy and practice in engineering education across the world.

 

I would want to ensure that the community retains a strong engineering input and does not take its eye off the need to have a demonstrable impact on engineering education practice and ultimately the contribution of graduate engineers as they enter the workforce. In addition, the goal of a truly international community is one I would seek to promote as we work towards building a significant global capacity in EER.

 

I intend to contribute to the development of REES events as an active participant and have a strong willingness to explore ways in which the events can evolve to provide an even more rewarding and worthwhile experience for all involved.

 

As the convenor of the UK EER SIG and through my involvement with the SEFI EER Working Group, I would strive to develop effective communication with colleagues across Europe to ensure that, as part of the REES Governing Board, I truly represented the diverse range of European views on how the international EER community should develop.

 

Erik de Graaff

Biosketch: Erik de Graaff (1951) graduated at the University of Amsterdam in 1978, majoring in the psychology of work and organisation. Starting with his first job at the Research Institute of applied Psychology in Amsterdam his interests focussed on learning and teaching in higher education. From 1979 till 1990 he has been involved in the development of the Problem Based curricula of medicine and health sciences at the University of Limburg in Maastricht. In 1990 Dr. de Graaff was invited to join TU Delft in order to support the process of educational innovation at the Faculty of Architecture. In 1994 he was appointed associate professor in the field of educational innovation at the department of didactics in the Faculty of Humanities and Philosophy, a position which has shifted to the faculty of Technology Policy and Management.

Dr de Graaff has been a visiting research professor at the University of Newcastle, Australia in 1995 and a guest professor at Aalborg University in Denmark since 1999. The collaboration with Aalborg University in Denmark resulted in an appointment as extraordinary professor (adjungeret professor) in September 2007.

Dr de Graaff has contributed to the promotion of knowledge and understanding of higher engineering education through publications and through participation in professional organisations like SEFI – the European Society of Engineering Education, IGIP – The International Society for Engineering Pedagogy and ALE – Active Learning in Engineering Education. In 2006 Dr de Graaff was appointed as associate editor of the European Journal of Engineering Education. Since January 2008 he is Editor-in-Chief of the EJEE.

 

Statement: Since my graduation in social sciences 1in 1979 I have been working as a consultant and a researcher in higher education, first focussing in the domain of medical education, later I have been active in different areas of engineering. The past years we have witnessed a worldwide revival of increased attention for engineering education with REES as one of spearheads.

In my inaugural speech at Aalborg University in February 2009 I have identified Engineering Education as a field of applied research rather than a separate discipline of science [1]. At the international session of the Annual conference of the Japanese Engineering Education Society in 2006 I have explained, that in Europe we have a respectable tradition of social scientists researching engineering education [2]. However, as I stated in the keynote address at the International Conference on Research on Engineering Education, Hawaii, July 23, 2007, there is as yet no trace of a scientific standard of engineering education research [3]. Evidently there are differences between the methods of research in engineering and those applied in social sciences. For instance, in order to be able to reflect on their own effectiveness as teachers engineers will have to learn to deal with issues like subjectivity in a practical manner.

I see REES as one of the main conduits working towards such a standard for research. What we need is a scientific discussion on the identity of engineering education and the role of research within this domain. I want to stimulate this debate based on my own experiences as a researcher and I want to contribute to this discussion by creating a FORUM function in the pages of the European Journal of Engineering Education, the journal of which I am currently editor-in-chief.

 

North America

Maura Borrego

 

Biosketch: Maura Borrego is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She holds U.S. NSF CAREER and Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) awards for her engineering education research. She was a Co-PI on the original NSF grant to fund the first international conference on research in engineering education (ICREE in 2007), and served as lead ethnographer for that meeting. Her studies of research in engineering education, and more recently the international engineering education scholarly community have appeared in Journal of Engineering Education, and have been presented at conferences including REES, SEFI (Europe), AaeE (Australia), and ASEE. She is PI on an NSF grant to encourage international collaboration in engineering education research, and served or serves on the planning committee for the International Symposium for Research on PBL in Engineering Education in Loughborough, UK, the US-Europe Workshop for Research on Gender and Diversity in Engineering Education in Delft, Netherlands, and the US-Australasia Workshop for Research on e-Learning in Engineering Education in Adelaide, Australia. As a member of the board for ASEE Educational Research and Methods Division, she has chaired the nominations and best paper committees. She teaches graduate level courses in engineering education research methods and assessment. All of Dr. Borrego’s degrees are in Materials Science and Engineering, M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, and B.S. from University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

 

Statement: My vision for REES is to expand international representation. A geographically distributed Governing Board is a good start, but this group and others involved in REES need to have more in-depth discussions about criteria for quality research. We need to move beyond concerns that a broader definition would necessarily jeopardize the quality of this event. There are many national and regional venues for presenting and discussing engineering education research, so the value of REES is understanding each others' research, including definitions of quality. It is important to view REES as an event rather than a community that includes or excludes. A final component to ensure the sustainability of REES would be funding, and I look forward to learning about this aspect of symposium planning from the more senior members of the Governing Board and past planning committees.

 

Jennifer Turns

 

Biosketch: Dr. Jennifer Turns is an Associate Professor in the Human Centered Design & Engineering department within the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. She earned her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1998 and her B.S. and M.S. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia in 1990.  As a REES board member, Dr. Turns will bring dedication to the engineering education community, a broad base of research expertise and interests, and commitment to the REES mission.  Dr. Turns has been an active participant, contributor, and reviewer in the engineering education community (e.g., ASEE, FIE, and JEE) for over 10 years.  She has had several leadership positions in engineering education such as her leadership of the Scholarship of Teaching element in the NSF-funded Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education and her current experiences as her department’s Associate Chair of Learning.  Dr. Turns’ research is broad and interdisciplinary.  She has investigated issues related to engineering educators (e.g., their decision making processes and their teaching concerns, training future educators, bridging research and practice) and engineering students (e.g., design learning, misconceptions, reflection, knowledge integration, professional identity development) using a wide range of research approaches.  In terms of REES, Dr. Turns has attended and presented at each of the previous REES meetings.  These experiences have made her enthusiastic for the REES mission and aware of the goals and complexities of the REES endeavor. 

 

Statement: As a board member, I will focus on REES goals of quality and diversity, with emphasis on the development of innovative strategies for addressing these goals.  I am particularly interested in diverse conceptions of quality and the exploration of innovative conference activities that support these issues.

 

South America

Mario Letelier

Biosketch: Personal data

Citizen of Chile

Married, 3 children

Lives in Santiago

Education

    Mechanical Engineer, University of Santiago of Chile.

    M. A. Sc. and Ph. D., University of Toronto.

Main present positions and activities

Director, Center for Research in Creativity and Higher Education, University of Santiago of Chile.

Member, National Commission for Accreditation (created in 2007), Ministry of Education.

    President, Chilean Society for Engineering Education.

    Full time professor, University of Santiago of Chile.

Teaching areas

    Thermofluidos

    Aerodynamics

    Creativity

Research areas

    Non- Newtonian Fluid Mechanics.

    Engineering Education.

    Learning processes and evaluation.

Some former positions and activities.

Member, National Commission for Accreditation, Ministry of Education (Pilot project, 8 years).

    President, Education Committee, Chilean Institute of Engineers.

    Member National Council for Technological Research (FONDECYT).

    Dean of Engineering, University of Santiago of Chile.

    Member, Governing Board, University of Los Lagos, Chile

    Member, Governing Board, University of Santiago of Chile.

    Consulting activities in Higher Education in Chile and South America.

Publications

    Five books (creativity, learning, Higher Education).

Over 70 refereed articles and book chapters in Engineering Science and over 50 refereed articles and books chapters in Education.

Over 180 full articles in conferences.

Personal data

Citizen of Chile

Married, 3 children

Lives in Santiago

Education

    Mechanical Engineer, University of Santiago of Chile.

    M. A. Sc. and Ph. D., University of Toronto.

Main present positions and activities

Director, Center for Research in Creativity and Higher Education, University of Santiago of Chile.

Member, National Commission for Accreditation (created in 2007), Ministry of Education.

    President, Chilean Society for Engineering Education.

    Full time professor, University of Santiago of Chile.

Teaching areas

    Thermofluidos

    Aerodynamics

    Creativity

Research areas

    Non- Newtonian Fluid Mechanics.

    Engineering Education.

    Learning processes and evaluation.

Some former positions and activities.

Member, National Commission for Accreditation, Ministry of Education (Pilot project, 8 years).

    President, Education Committee, Chilean Institute of Engineers.

    Member National Council for Technological Research (FONDECYT).

    Dean of Engineering, University of Santiago of Chile.

    Member, Governing Board, University of Los Lagos, Chile

    Member, Governing Board, University of Santiago of Chile.

    Consulting activities in Higher Education in Chile and South America.

Publications

    Five books (creativity, learning, Higher Education).

Over 70 refereed articles and book chapters in Engineering Science and over 50 refereed articles and books chapters in Education.

Over 180 full articles in conferences.

 

Statement: My personal commitment with engineering education goes back to 1985, when I started to combine academic with managerial activities at my College of Engineering. A program for research in engineering education was created by myself at that time, which was the basis for the center in which I am presently the director. I firmly believe that universities should devote significant research time to the better understanding of many educational issues that are both relevant and phenomenologically complex. This includes learning processes , student culture, faculty styles, resources design, curricula design, evaluation, and many more. In my case I cannot conceive spending considerable time and effort in research in non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics (my field) and not addressing with similar rigor problem that in my college are waiting for rigorous scrutiny. In this way, my center is presently involved in research about competencies, evaluation, and learning in general. Through REES I envision an increasing commitment with research in our educational field in Chile and many other countries in South America, and in other continents as well.