Workshop Facilitators

Making Academic Change Happen

Jameel Ahmed, Ph.D.

Interim Department Head and Associate Professor, Department of Applied Biology & Biomedical Engineering Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Jameel has been teaching in the Applied Biology and Biomedical Engineering Department since 1999. He earned a B.S. in Bioengineering from Syracuse University in 1990 and M.S. and PhD. degrees from Northwestern University in 1993 and 1997, respectively.

During his time at Rose-Hulman, Jameel helped develop and implement a new B.S. program in Biomedical Engineering and is currently serving as Interim Department Head for the ABBE department. His research interests include signal processing in the retina, neurobiology and neuroprosthetics, and he has collaborated with many undergraduates and graduate students in these areas. His primary teaching areas are Systems Physiology and Biomedical Instrumentation.

Also, Jameel has served as a member of the Institute's Leadership Advancement Program, which is a campus-wide effort to offers opportunities for students to develop their leadership skills. He is also active in the Wabash Valley community, serving on the Boards of Leadership Wabash Valley and the United Way of the Wabash Valley.

Kay C Dee

Professor, Department of Applied Biology & Biomedical Engineering
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

After receiving a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992, and M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1994 and 1996, Kay C joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tulane University. In 2004 she joined the faculty at Rose-Hulman and served as the Founding Director for the Rose-Hulman Center for the Practice and Scholarship of Education from 2007-2009.

Her educational research interests include learning styles, teaching faculty about teaching, and student evaluations of teaching. She's given more than 50 presentations/workshops on teaching and education-related topics. She's coauthored more than 20 peer-reviewed publications on teaching and education, more than 25 peer-reviewed biomedical engineering publications, and the textbook An Introduction to Tissue-Biomaterial Interactions. Her educational and biomedical research projects have been funded by organizations including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Kay C's teaching portfolio includes undergraduate and graduate courses on: biology and biomaterials; cell-biomaterial interactions; cell and tissue mechanics; bioethics, science fiction, and tissue engineering; and teaching engineering.

Kay C has received a number of awards for teaching and research, including: "Professor of the Year" award for the state of Louisiana, from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Tulane University's "Inspirational Undergraduate Professor Award," Tulane University President's Award for Junior Faculty: Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, a Young Investigator award from the Biomedical Engineering Society, and a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation.

Craig G. Downing

Associate Professor and Interim Head, Department of Engineering Management
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Craig received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering Technology from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a B.S. in Mathematics from Southeast Missouri State University. He received his M.S. in Manufacturing Systems and doctorate in Workforce Education and Development from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

He has as over 15 years of experience teaching Manufacturing, Management, and Mathematics at the post-secondary level. Additionally, he has amassed 10 years of industrial experience leading process improvement projects, four years as a Process Engineer and six years as a private consultant. His interests are rooted in Industrial-Academic relationships, Quality Management Systems, Leadership Development and Change Management. Dr. Downing is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt.

In addition to on-campus teaching responsibilities, Craig has responsibility for developing and managing an off-campus program of Continuing & Professional Studies.

Richard A. Layton

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

A former Director of the Center for the Practice and Scholarship of Education at Rose-Hulman, Richard received a B.S. from California State University, Northridge, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington. Before joining Rose-Hulman, Richard taught at North Carolina A&T University.

His areas of scholarship include student team formation and peer evaluation; persistence, migration, and retention in engineering education; and data analysis and visualization for investigating and presenting quantitative data. His teaching practice includes formal and informal cooperative learning and informal inquiry-based, hands-on experiences in labs, mini-labs, and student workshops.

For a decade, he has been the key developer of the reformed, lab-based measurements curriculum in ME that incorporates informal inquiry-based, hands-on experiences. As an outgrowth of this work, he now is collaborating with his technical communications colleagues in developing scaffolded communications activities for use in his disciplinary technical courses.
Most of his courses and laboratories involve instructor-assigned teams and guided instruction to help students become more effective team members. He is a founding developer of a free, web-based system-the CATME/Team-Maker System-that helps faculty assign students to teams and conduct self- and peer-evaluations.

Donald E. Richards

Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Director of the Center for the Practice and Scholarship of Education
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Don joined Rose-Hulman in 1988 having previously taught at The Ohio State University. He earned all of his degrees in mechanical engineering: a B.S. at Kansas State University, an M.S. at Iowa State University, and a Ph.D. at The Ohio State University.

His technical expertise is in the area of thermal-fluids and he is the co-author with Ken Wark of Thermodynamics (6th ed). He teaches the full range of required thermal-fluid courses and offers electives in gas dynamics, HVAC, and thermodynamics. In 1988, he was awarded the Charles E. MacQuigg Teaching Award by the students of the OSU College of Engineering.

He served as part of the Rose-Hulman leadership team for the Foundation Coalition Project - an NSF-funded Engineering Education Coalition. He led the team that developed the Rose-Hulman Sophomore Engineering Curriculum (SEC). The SEC was a major redesign of the required engineering science and mathematics courses into an integrated sequence of eight sophomore-level courses built around a systems accounting, and modeling approach that emphasizes the common, underlying concepts of engineering science. In its 19th year, it represents one of the most significant and lasting curricular innovations from the Engineering Education Coalitions. In 2001, he authored the textbook Basic Engineering Science: A Systems, Accounting, and Modeling Approach to support this curriculum. Through his work with the Foundation Coalition and the SEC, he gained experience in active learning techniques, in curriculum design and integration, in managing and leading faculty teams, and in selling and sustaining curricular innovations.

Julia M. Williams

Executive Director, Office of Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment Professor of English
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Julia joined the faculty of the Humanities and Social Sciences Department in 1992, then assumed duties in the Office of Institutional Research, Planning, and Assessment in 2005. Her experience in undergraduate teaching began in 1985 when she taught English Composition at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, then continued through her graduate years at Emory University, where she received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Throughout her career at Rose-Hulman, she has blended her work in the classroom with work in assessment. She was the founder of the Program in Technical Communication at Rose-Hulman, a campus-wide effort to improve students' written and oral communication skills in a variety of courses. In 1995 she joined the effort to create and implement the RosE Portfolio System, an online portfolio assessment tool that is still in use today as the RosEvaluation Tool. Evidence of student learning from the RosEvaluation is used by the Institute and academic programs to measure student learning and to direct curriculum improvements. She has been active in the use and assessment of tablet PCs in the classroom, and she has collaborated with faculty and staff in projects such as the Rose-Hulman Leadership Advancement Program and the national RosEvaluation Conference.

Julia's publications on assessment, engineering and professional communication, and tablet PCs have appeared in the Journal of Engineering Education, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, and The Impact of Tablet PCs and Pen-based Technologies in the Classroom, among others. She is the recipient of the 2010 Sterling Olmsted Award (ASEE Liberal Education Division), the 2007 Council for Higher Education Accreditation Award, 2007 HP Technology for Teaching Award, and the 2005 Microsoft Research Award. She is also the recipient of the 2008 Rose-Hulman Board of Trustees Outstanding Scholar Award and the 2004 Humanities and Social Sciences Department Outstanding Researcher Award.

Richard A. House

Associate Professor of English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

In 1994, Rich earned a B.A. in English and philosophy at Illinois Wesleyan University, followed by an M.A. (1996) and Ph.D. (2000) in English from the University of California at Irvine. He began his career in engineering education as a Marion L. Brittain Teaching Fellow at Georgia Tech before joining the Rose-Hulman faculty in 2001.　 He has been active since graduate school in planning and administering teaching workshops.

Rich has active interests in literary studies, and regularly teaches courses on Shakespeare and on American literature as well as communication for engineers and scientists. In recent years, most of Rich's publications and presentations have focused on engineering communication pedagogy and on environmental sustainability in undergraduate engineering curricula.

Rich is one of the founders of Rose-Hulman's Home for Environmentally Responsible Engineering, a living-learning community for first-year students that uses concerns of environmental sustainability to unify participants' required first-year courses and extracurricular experiences. With his colleagues, Rich has recently been showcasing the HERE program in presentations for the American Society for Engineering Education, the IEEE Professional Communication Society, and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

Ella L. Ingram

Associate Professor of Applied Biology
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Ella earned a degree in biology and mathematics from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, then the Ph.D. in ecology and evolution from Indiana University in Bloomington. She joined the Rose-Hulman faculty in 2004. Since then, Ella has taught courses ranging from introductory cell biology to upper-level electives like evolutionary medicine and environmental field methods.

In collaboration with undergraduate researchers, Ella has studied wetland ecology, sexual selection in humans, and plant-fungi interactions. Her educational research focus has been on student learning of evolution and genetics, and the influence of intellectual development on learning. This work has been published in published in top-tier journals and featured in Science magazine. Ella is a regular contributor to community education projects, including the master gardener class series, the master naturalist program, and the local lifelong learning institute.

Ella has coordinated several institute-wide events, like the Careers in Biology Series and the Heading to Graduate School seminars. Future plans focus on creating opportunities for translating educational research to classroom practice.

Steve Chenoweth

Associate Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Steve spent 30 years in industry, including teaching and evaluating courses for NCR Corporation and for AT&T/Lucent. He created courses using various methods of delivery to engineers and customers, using the students' later success on projects to judge the value of the courses. He pioneered the adoption of creative design practices as a part of reinventing the system design curriculum at Bell Labs.

At Rose-Hulman, Steve was an inventor of the successful bachelors in software engineering program, and he is currently playing this same role in developing a master's program in SE. He was one of the initiators of Rose's interdisciplinary robotics program. In all of these programs, the focus is on having students work on real life projects, with outside clients, which come as close as possible to their upcoming career experience.

He is an adopter of Knowles' Andragogy, which mimics many of the conditions under which engineers and scientists must progress in their projects. Like Problem-Based Learning, this is a significant change from standard collegiate pedagogies; it requires a considered plan for successful adoption.

Steve has an MBA and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.