ECE DLS: Susan Lord “Enhancing Learning and Inclusivity in Electrical Engineering

Professor Susan Lord, University of San Diego

Title: Enhancing Learning and Inclusivity in Electrical Engineering

Abstract: How can we educate students to be the most effective engineers when they graduate? What does it take to attract a broader range of students to electrical and computer engineering? What curricular efforts could support both of these goals? These are important questions for the discipline. As part of an NSF-funded Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) grant, “Developing Changemaking Engineers,” the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering (SMSE) at the University of San Diego (USD) is working to address these questions.

In this talk, I’ll begin with a study that explores a large, multi-institutional, longitudinal dataset of engineering undergraduates. I’ll describe who is currently attracted to engineering and will highlight how the field of electrical engineering fares compared to other engineering disciplines. Then, I’ll describe one promising approach to change the demographics of the electrical engineering student body and to increase the learning that happens in the undergraduate curriculum. The approach entails reframing electrical engineering from a purely technical discipline to one which is socio-technical and I’ll present modules we’ve developed for Circuits that accomplish this.

Bio: Susan M. Lord is Professor and Chair of Integrated Engineering at the University of San Diego. She received a BS from Cornell University in Materials Science and Electrical Engineering (EE) and an MS and PhD in EE from Stanford University in EE. Her research focuses on the study and promotion of diversity in engineering including student pathways and inclusive teaching. She is passionate about changing the culture of engineering to be more welcoming and has integrated sociotechnical modules into her engineering courses. She has won best paper awards from the Journal of Engineering Education, IEEE Transactions on Education, and Education Sciences. Dr. Lord is a Fellow of the IEEE and ASEE and received the 2018 IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award.  She is a coauthor of The Borderlands of Education:  Latinas in Engineering. She is a co-Director of the National Effective Teaching Institute (NETI).