Slattery to attend national symposium for leaders in engineering education

10/14/2015

Margaret Slattery, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, is among 70 of the nation’s emerging leaders in engineering education selected to attend the National Academy of Engineering’s seventh annual Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium (FOEE).

The invitation-only symposium will be held Oct. 25 to 28 at the National Academies Beckman Center in Irvine, California.

Participants are selected based on their contributions to engineering education, along with a dean or department head’s recommendation and the submission of an innovative education proposal.

Slattery’s proposal, “Making General Education Relevant for Engineering Students,” focuses on enhancing course options available to Penn State undergraduate engineering students by introducing principles of the arts, humanities or social sciences in a way that students can relate.

“Students are sometimes apprehensive to engage in subjects that they are not familiar with,” Slattery said. “The goal of my proposal is to introduce new courses to the curriculum that frame topics in the arts and humanities in ways that allow students to make direct connections to engineering.”

The plan, if approved by the college and University, would guide the development of new interdisciplinary courses that focus on topics such as ethics in health care and the art of design.

The proposed courses would be available at University Park and online to cater to the growing number of engineering students studying at the Commonwealth campuses.

An advocate for education, Slattery has been a Penn State faculty member since 2007 and currently serves as the undergraduate program coordinator for the biomedical engineering department. She is a member of the Penn State Faculty Senate’s Special Committee on Implementation of the General Education Reform, and served as co-chair for the Penn State General Education Task Force.

“I am honored for the nomination to attend FOEE 2015,” Slattery said. “I look forward to networking with education professionals and gaining valuable insight that I can bring back to Penn State.”

Since 2009, the FOEE symposium has been held annually and exists to bring together the nation’s most engaged and innovative engineering educators in order to recognize, reward and promote effective, substantive and inspirational engineering education.

The organization seeks to make 21st century engineering education exciting, creative, rigorous, adventurous, demanding and empowering.

 

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MEDIA CONTACT:

Mindy Krause

muk45@engr.psu.edu

Margaret Slattery
Margaret Slattery

 
 

About

The Department of Biomedical Engineering administers the undergraduate major in biomedical engineering, and is a part of the university-wide Intercollege Graduate Degree Program, offering both M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Bioengineering. Our work combines traditional engineering principles with medicine and technology for the betterment of human health and society. 

Department of Biomedical Engineering

122 Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Building

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802-4400

Phone: 814-863-6614

Email: bme@engr.psu.edu