Slattery selected to attend national symposium for leaders in engineering education

Margary Slattery

Margaret Slattery, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, was 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 was held Oct. 25 to 28 at the National Academies Beckman Center in Irvine, CA.

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 healthcare 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.

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.