Current Members of the Research Team
Current Members of the Research Team
Click here to view past members of the team
Lisa R. Lattuca, Co-Project Director and Co-Principal Investigator
Patrick T. Terenzini, Co-Project Director and Co-Principal Investigator P2P & P360:
Gül Kremer, Sr. Project Associate (P2P) & Co-PI (P360)
David Knight, Graduate Research Assistant
Dan Merson, Graduate Research Volunteer
Hyun Kyoung Ro, Graduate Research Assistant
Travis York, Graduate Research Volunteer
P360: P2P:
Sara Codd, Co-PI Tom Litzinger, Co-PI
Rose Marra, Co-PI
Ann McKenna, Co-PI
Betsy Palmer, Co-PI
Lois Trautvetter, Co-PI
Carolyn Plumb, Senior Personnel
Katie Piacentini, GRA
Barbara Z. Komlos, GRA
Professor of Education, Higher Education Program
Senior Scientist, Center for the Study of Higher Education
The Pennsylvania State University
Lisa Lattuca’s research and teaching interests focus on the intersections of curriculum, teaching, student learning, and faculty work in postsecondary settings, addressing questions such as how faculty attitudes and behaviors related to curricular planning and instruction influence student learning in higher education, why and how faculty adopt new forms of knowledge production (e.g., interdisciplinary research), and how both disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives affect faculty work and student learning in postsecondary settings. In her most recent research projects, she has been exploring these topics in the context of undergraduate engineering education.
Lisa recently completed, with colleagues Pat Terenzini and Fred Volkwein of Penn State, a national study of the impact of the ABET EC2000 accreditation standards on student learning and engineering programs, as well as a study of the activities of NSF-grantees engaged in planning curricular innovations in undergraduate engineering (with Dorothy Evensen).
Dr. Lattuca earned a Ph.D. in education from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree from Cornell University, and a B.S. from Saint Peter’s College.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Curricula, teaching and learning in higher education
Engineering education
Faculty work
Interdisciplinary research and teaching
Disciplinary influences on knowledge production
Distinguished Professor of Education, Emeritus, Higher Education Program
Senior Scientist, Emeritus, Center for the Study of Higher Education
The Pennsylvania State University
Pat Terenzini has spent 35 years studying the effects of college on student learning and development, persistence and educational attainment, and the college experience and outcomes for low-income and first-generation students. He has done extensive research on learning among undergraduate engineering students. He is a former editor-in-chief of New Directions for Institutional Research, associate editor of Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, and editorial board member for The Review of Higher Education. Dr. Terenzini has been a consulting editor for Research in Higher Education for more than twenty-five years. Terenzini is co-author (with Ernest T. Pascarella) of How College Affects Students (Jossey-Bass, 1990, 2005), a two-volume synthesis of more than 30 years of research on the impacts of college on students. He has also published more than 120 referred journal articles.
Terenzini has received the research awards of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, the Association for Institutional Research, the American College Personnel Association, and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. He is a three-time winner of the Forum Best Paper Award from the Association for Institutional Research and received the William Elgin Wickenden Award from the American Society for Engineering Education for the best paper published in the Journal of Engineering Education in 2001. He is also a past president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Effects of college on student learning and development
College experiences of low-income and first-generation students
Teaching and learning in undergraduate engineering
Co-Director & Assistant Professor
Magnetic Resonance Microscopy Laboratory
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Montana State University
Sarah Codd’s 13-year research career includes research stays in several internationally recognized Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Imaging laboratories and has ensured her involvement at the forefront of NMR technique development and application to engineering and materials research. She is also affiliated with the Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State, an NSF Engineering Research Center. She received New Zealand’s premier post-doctoral Fellowship (FoRST 1996-1999) and held a Humboldt Fellowship (2000). She is currently establishing a program in applications of MRM to porous materials research primarily via analysis of transport processes in these materials, and recently received NSF Major Research Instrumentation award and an NSF CAREER award for her research.
From the beginning of her career, Dr. Codd has integrated research and teaching. She has taught courses at six institutions in three countries and has been extensively involved in outreach activities ranging from producing touring physics shows for high schools in NZ, to running gifted student physics camps in the UK, to developing on-campus lab activities for U.S. programs designed for women and Native Americans.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Increasing diversity in Engineering
Retention and recruitment of female students
Improving learning and long-term retention of thermodynamics concepts
Graduate Research Assistant
Center for the Study of Higher Education
The Pennsylvania State University
David Knight is a doctoral student and has a graduate assistantship with Dr. Lisa Lattuca. Originally from southeastern Virginia, David spent the past 7 years in Charlottesville at the University of Virginia. His undergraduate degree is in Environmental Sciences (206), and he just finished a double Masters program in Environmental Sciences and Urban and Environmental Planning. Though he focused on hurricanes for his thesis, David has become very interested in making connections across disciplines, and teaching experiences have led him to focus on how university programs and curriculum can integrate science topics into non-science fields. While in graduate school at UVa, David worked for the University's band program as the logistical coordinator and spent many days attending UVa athletic contests.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Interdisciplinarity
STEM education
The role of the sciences in general education
Doctoral Student
Department of Education Academics
Montana State University
Barbara Komlos's primary research interest explores the academic writing of Native American students, and its role in persistence in college. This past summer she developed and taught a writing workshop for incoming Native American students in the Designing Our Community (DOC) bridge program in the College of Engineering at MSU.
Until this year, Barbara has also taught Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages at Montana State University. Prior to moving to Montana, she taught English as a Second Language and developmental writing at San José State University. She earned a B.A. in Spanish and International Studies from Emory University and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics/TESL from Georgia State University.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Academic and developmental reading and writing
Retention of underrepresented groups in highr education
Curriculum development
Program assessment
Community education
Associate Professor, Engineering Design
Affiliate Faculty, Industrial Engineering
The Pennsylvania State University
Gül Kremer's research interests include engineering and entrepreneurship education, human design performance analysis, engineering design, design decision-making, stochastic systems analysis, and job-floor management. In addition to numerous peer-reviewed articles and conference presentations, Dr. Kremer is co-author of Engineering Design: A Practical Guide. She has been a Summer Faculty Fellow for the AFRL during 2002-2005 for which she conducted research at the Human Effectiveness Directorate. In 2006, Dr. Kremer received the American Society for Engineering Education Engineering Library's Division's Best Publication Award and the Penn State Engineering Society’s Outstanding Teaching Award.
Dr. Kremer received her Ph.D. in Engineering Management and System Engineering from the University of Missouri, Rolla. She also has an M.B.A. in Production Management from Istanbul University and an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul, Turkey.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Outcome assessment in design/engineering learning
Impact of group heterogeneity on learning and artifacts in the engineering classroom (personality traits, gender, etc.)
Embedding creativity in engineering education
Power in decision-making in collaborative settings
Entrepreneurship/engineering education – curricular issues
Director, Leonhard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education
The Pennsylvania State University
Tom Litzinger directs the Leonhard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education at the Pennsylvania State University. Prior to coming to Penn State, Dr. Litzinger worked in research and development for General Electric. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University.
As Director of the Leonard Center, Dr. Litzinger is involved in curricular re-design processes, assessment and educational research. His current education research includes development of expertise, self-directed learning, and the use of multiple representations in learning. Additional research interests include thermodynamics, internal combustion engines, gas turbines, and fluid mechanics. Dr. Litzinger has published more than 100 articles and conference papers. During his time at Penn State, Dr. Litzinger has won several teaching and research awards.
Associate Professor, Learning Technologies
University of Missouri—Columbia
Rose Marra earned a BS and MS in computer science and a Ph.D. in education. She has been active in engineering education and research for more than 10 years. Before moving to a university setting, she spent eight years as a practicing software engineer for AT&T Bell Labs. From 1995 to 2000, she was Assistant Professor of Engineering and Director of Instructional Services for Penn State's College of Engineering. Prior to that, she served as a Curriculum Development and Evaluation Specialist for the Leonhard Center of the College of Engineering at Penn State and as a senior training specialist in the Applied Research Laboratories (ARL) at Penn State.
Dr. Marra was a member of the Penn State team awarded the 1998 Boeing Outstanding Engineering Education award for the nation's best example of an engineering curriculum responding to the needs of the 21st century. She has been a principal investigator on several externally funded engineering projects and has published extensively on engineering education with colleagues from engineering and education.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Engineering education assessment
Women and minority engineering education student retention and development
Intellectual development of college students
Research Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering and School of Education and Social Policy
Director of Education Improvement and Director of the Certificate in Engineering Design Program
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science
Northwestern University
Ann McKenna is the Director of Education Improvement in the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University. She holds a joint appointment as Research Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Education and Social Policy. She also serves as Co-Director of the Northwestern Center for Engineering Education Research (NCEER). Dr. McKenna’s research focuses on the role of adaptive expertise in engineering education, design teaching and learning, and teaching approaches of engineering faculty. Dr. McKenna received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University and Ph.D. in Engineering, Science and Mathematics Education from the University of California at Berkeley.
She has published extensively on engineering education with her colleagues in engineering at Northwestern and through the NSF-funded VaNTH Engineering Research Center. She has also worked as a mechanical engineering at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) in Japan. She has won both the Best Overall Paper Award from ASEE and the Outstanding Paper Award from FIE.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Adaptive expertise
Engineering faculty pedagogy and conceptions of teaching and learning
Learning through design and complex problem solving
Exploring how one forms an identity of engineering professional practice
Graduate Research Volunteer
Center for the Study of Higher Education
The Pennsylvania State University
Dan Merson is a doctoral student in Higher Education who transferred from the University of Michigan to Penn State this fall. He most recently worked at Michigan's National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good on research efforts for the Immigration in Higher Education conference, the Imagining America project, and the WIRED initiative. He is also currently working with Michigan's College of Engineering researching the success of community college transfer students. At Penn State, in addition to volunteering for the P2P and P360 projects, he is working on a multi-institution project for the NCAA that assesses student-athletes' perceptions and experiences regarding campus climate.
Dan received his M.Ed. in College Student Personnel from Penn State and his B.S. in Psychology, with extensive coursework in Electrical Engineering, from Kansas State University. Before beginning his doctoral program at Michigan he worked for Residence Life, the Dean of Students, and the College of Engineering at Penn State and for the Office of Admissions and the School of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Student learning and development
Technology in Higher Education
Engineering education
Associate Professor of Education
Montana State University
Betsy Palmer has collaborated with engineering faculty on several undergraduate education projects. Dr. Palmer is currently a co-PI for an NSF-funded project, Hands-on Introduction to Chemical and Biological Engineering, to improve introductory chemical engineering courses. She began her research in engineering education while she was a doctoral student in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Penn State where she served as a graduate research assistant for an evaluation of ECSEL, one of the NSF Engineering Education Program coalitions.
In addition to studies of problem-based learning and assessment of cognitive development, including a study of the intellectual development of engineering students, Dr. Palmer studies the impact of diversity experiences on college students.
Graduate Research Assistant
Learning Technologies
University of Missouri—Columbia
Director of Educational Innovation and Strategic Projects
College of Engineering
Montana State University
Carolyn Plumb has been involved in engineering education for 20 years. At MSU, she works on various curriculum and instruction projects including instructional development for faculty and graduate students. She also serves as the college’s assessment and evaluation expert, currently planning and implementing assessment for the following programs: Designing Our Community (funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation), Providing Resources for Engineering Preparedness (funded by the U.S. Department of Education), and Enhancing Access Scholarships for Engineering and Computer Science program (funded by NSF).
Prior to coming to MSU in 2004, Plumb was at the University of Washington (UW), where she directed the Engineering Communication Program. While at the UW, Plumb also worked as an Instructional Development and Assessment Specialist for the School of Law. She served as the evaluator for the Biology for Engineers program (funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) and is currently the external evaluator for the GenOM Project at the UW (funded by the National Institutes of Health). Plumb has a PhD in Educational Psychology and an M.S. in Technical Communication, both from the University of Washington.
Graduate Research Assistant
Center for the Study of Higher Education
The Pennsylvania State University
Hyun Kyoung is a doctoral student in the Higher Education Program at Penn State. Her research interests include college student outcomes, assessment and measurement, and institutional research. Recently, Hyun Kyoung worked with David Post on analyzing educational attainment using Hong Kong census.
Hyun Kyoung earned a B.A in Education and an M.A. in Educational Administration at Korea University.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Student outcomes
Assessment and Measurement
Institutional research
Assistant Professor & Associate Director
Higher Education, Administration, and Policy
School of Education and Social Policy
Northwestern University
Lois Trautvetter holds a B.A. in chemistry (College of Wooster) and an M.S. in chemical engineering (Carnegie-Mellon University), and she earned her Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration (University of Michigan). After completing a post-doctoral appointment at Northwestern University, Dr. Trautvetter serves as Associate Director of the Master of Science Program, including Higher Education Administration and Policy and holds a faculty appointment as Assistant Professor in the School of Education and Social Policy. She teaches courses on college students and research methodology. Dr. Trautvetter’s research interests include faculty development and productivity issues that include enhancing teaching and research, motivation, and new and junior faculty, as well as gender issues relating to faculty and students in the STEM disciplines. She participated as a researcher in two national postsecondary research centers for education funded by the Department of Education. She recently co-authored Putting students first: How colleges develop students purposefully. As a chemist, she holds patents in the coatings and resins industry (PPG Industries, Pittsburgh, PA).
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Faculty development in engineering schools that enhance teaching and learning
Engineering faculty behaviors, attitudes, beliefs
Gender issues related to faculty and students in the STEM disciplines
Fostering of new and junior faculty at engineering schools
