Northwestern Center for Engineering Education Research Announced

January 17, 2007

The Northwestern Center for Engineering Education Research (NCEER) has just been announced at the McCormick School of Engineering. NCEER's mission is to be a catalyst to transform engineering education locally, nationally, and globally. NCEER will build a community that conducts leading research on how to best educate engineering students as adaptive experts who can solve and anticipate global technological challenges. NCEER will support interdisciplinary research in engineering education, cultivating relationships within McCormick, across Northwestern, and with other universities with similar aims.

"Cross-school collaborations of this sort enhance the national impact of the educational research that we conduct at Northwestern," said Penelope Peterson, dean of the School of Education and Social Policy and a member of NCEER's development team.

Engineering and engineering education in the future will be radically different. The engineering profession will require technical expertise balanced with creativity and an awareness of the human dimensions of technology to develop innovative solutions to modern society's needs. Through a focus on research, NCEER will deepen our understanding of how to educate engineering students to become tomorrow's "transformative engineers."

"We want to bring experts in educational practice to McCormick and provide ideas about where we should go next," says Carr. "Our goal is to give visibility to our excellent but dispersed education programs and provide support for new pedagogical and curricular change in engineering education."

NCEER will also be an authoritative resource on engineering education research, acting as the lead organization disseminating new knowledge about engineering education. NCEER will promote pedagogical and curricular change in engineering through innovative technology and other means. As part of their education, Northwestern students will be participants both in evaluating innovations and helping researchers develop new innovations. NCEER will create the infrastructure needed to carry out and evaluate large-scale experiments in engineering education. Thus, NCEER will be the premiere research community that investigates engineering thinking and how to cultivate this aptitude in students. This center will be co-directed by Professors Rob Linsenmeier and Ann McKenna with substantial involvement from Associate Dean Steve Carr.

For more information please contact Ann McKenna at mckenna@northwestern.edu or Rob Linsenmeier at r-linsenmeier@northwestern.edu.