Virginia Commonwealth University
April 21 to April 22, 2013
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Stephanie G. Adams
Dr. Stephanie G. Adams is currently professor and department head of the Engineering Education Department in Virginia Tech's College of Engineering where she has served in this position since August 2011. Dr. Adams is a highly accomplished scholar and administrator in the world of engineering education.
Adams is a past recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, given to support her goal of designing, developing, and validating a model for the facilitation of effective teaming in the engineering classroom. She also received the American Society of Engineering Education's 2008 DuPont Minorities in Engineering Award. In 2006, she was an invited participant at the U.S. Frontiers in Engineering Symposium hosted by the National Academy of Engineering.
Adams' resume also includes a 3-year stint at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) where she served as associate dean for undergraduate studies and associate professor of mechanical engineering. Prior to joining VCU, Dr. Adams spent 10 years at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln from 1998 until 2008. She started as an assistant professor of industrial and management systems engineering, and within four years moved to an administrative track. In 2002 she joined the university's graduate studies office as interim associate dean and special assistant to the dean. In 2004, she was promoted to the assistant dean for research in engineering. In 2007 she was named the associate dean for undergraduate education.
Concurrently, from 2005 until 2007 Adams also served as a program officer with the National Science Foundation's Division of Engineering Education. Her responsibilities at the government agency included organizing and conducting review panels on a variety of topics related to research in engineering education. She also managed the division's budget of some $10 million. She simultaneously spent the 2005-06 academic year as an American Association for the Advancem ent of Science/National Science Foundation Science and Engineering Policy Fellow.
Adams is an honors graduate of North Carolina A&T State University, where she earned her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1989. In 1991 she was awarded her master's degree is systems engineering from the University of Virginia, and she received her doctorate in interdisciplinary engineering from Texas A&M in 1998.
She holds membership in a number of organizations and presently serves on the American Society of Engineering Education's Board of Directors and on the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration Interdisciplinary Scientific Environmental Technology Cooperative Science Center's Advisory Board at North Carolina A&T State University.
2013 Symposium winners L to R: 2nd place poster winner, Derrick Williams, Jr. (SAU); 1st place oral winner, Esther Jackson (GMU); 3rd place poster winner, Ellie Okwei (U.Va.); 2nd place oral winner, Alysha Simmons (VT); 1st place poster winner, Jancarla Ocampo (VT); 3rd place oral winner, Brittnei Hall (ECSU).