Teaching and Evaluation Teams

Karl Smith
Emeritus Professor
University of Minnesota

Karl Smith is Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering, Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor, Executive Co-Director STEM Education Center, and Director of Graduate Studies Infrastructure Systems Management and Engineering, Technological Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota. He also is the Cooperative Learning Professor, School of Engineering Education, College of Engineering, Purdue University.

Dr. Smith’s research and development interests include building research and innovation capabilities in engineering education; faculty and graduate student professional development; the role of cooperation in learning and design; problem formulation, modeling, and knowledge engineering; and project and knowledge management and leadership. Karl has over 30 years of experience working with faculty to redesign their courses and programs to enhance student learning. He adapted the cooperative learning model to engineering education, and in the past 15 years has focused on high-performance teamwork through his workshops and book Teamwork and Project Management (2014). His bachelor’s and master’s degrees are in metallurgical engineering from Michigan Technological University and his Ph.D. is in educational psychology from the University of Minnesota.

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Ann McKenna
Professor and Director
Arizona State University

Ann McKenna is Professor and Director of The Polytechnic School in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. Dr. McKenna’s research focuses on understanding the cognitive and social processes of design, design teaching and learning, the role of adaptive expertise in design and innovation, the impact and diffusion of education innovations, and teaching approaches of engineering faculty. She has been an active participant in creating and teaching educational innovations for over 15 years, and has experience in working with faculty in professional development activities. Dr. McKenna received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. She is also a Senior Associate Editor for the Journal of Engineering Education.

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Christopher Swan
Associate Professor
Tufts University

Christopher Swan is Associate Dean for Undergraduate Curriculum Development in the School of Engineering and an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Tufts University. Dr. Swan holds additional appointments in the Department of Education, Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service and Center for Engineering Education and Outreach at Tufts. Active in the American Society for Engineering Education, he has served at various officer posts for the Environmental Engineering Division (2003-7) and the Community Engagement Division (2011 – present). His current research interests in engineering education focus on project-based learning and service-based pedagogies. He has B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas – Austin and Sc.D. from MIT.

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Russell Korte
Assistant Professor
Colorado State University

Russell Korte is Assistant Professor, Organization Learning, Performance, and Change, School of Education, Colorado State University. Dr. Korte’s research focuses on understanding the socio-cultural processes affecting the learning and performance of engineering students, graduates, and faculty. Recent work included developing innovative educational experiences for engineering students as a Fellow with the Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education and a member of the Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education at the University of Illinois. He has been active for over 20 years in designing and delivering educational programs across a range of industries and educational institutions. He also has experience working with professionals in activities similar to the training program proposed here. Dr. Korte received his B.S. in Education, an M.B.A. in Marketing, and a Ph.D. in Human Resource Development, with a doctoral minor in Business Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Adult Education from the University of Minnesota.

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Fahad Hassan
Chief Business Development Officer
ALMA

Fahad Hassan is the Chief Business Development Officer at ALMA, a Portland, OR based K-12's Holistic Student Engagement Platform, which provides better experience for administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Before ALMA, Fahad founded a tech company Always Prepped, which was acquired by ALMA in 2014. He has wide experience in education, entrepreneurship, and technology and has been awarded the Bloomberg 25 under 25 for innovation in entrepreneurship award, Forber 30 under 30 leaders in Education, and GAP Fund top 50 entrepreneurs. Fahad received his diploma from Virginia Tech in Business Administration and Theology.  

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Heidi Olinger
Founder and CEO
Pretty Brainy

Heidi Olinger is an educator and the author of Fashionably Mashed: The STEM of Fashion Design. For teaching excellence, she has been honored by the Boettcher Foundation and others. She is the founder and CEO of Pretty Brainy, a nonprofit organization that designs STEAM (science, technology, engineering art, and math) curricula and materials to support teachers in exciting students about learning and in preparing them, especially girls, to pursue the broadest of career options. Her work in apparel design has won the highest honor from the Mom’s Choice Awards® and was featured in an international showcase by the World Trade Center-Denver. In 2012 InnovatioNews named Pretty Brainy “An educational leader for STEM education.”

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Heath Naquin
Managing Director
Next Generation Photovoltaics

Heath Naquin serves as Executive Director for the SW I-Corps Node at The University of Texas at Austin. He also serves as the Managing Director for a multi-university NSF Industry University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) the Center for Next Generation Photovoltaics. Heath was a founding member of three different start-up business initiatives across sectors. He has helped companies raise more than $30 Million in funding from private and government sources. Heath actively works on international commercialization initiatives and efforts focusing on industry collaboration, new project development and deployment along with building linkages between industry, government, academia and the venture capital community. Heath has worked in more than 20 countries on international commercialization and entrepreneurship initiatives in countries such as Colombia, Jordan, Iraq, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, Armenia, and Turkey. Mr. Naquin has extensive experience with the NSF, EPA and NIH SBIR programs as an active commercial reviewer for many years.  Heath also currently serves as Faculty for the Concordia University Executive MBA program. 

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Lydia McClure
Partner
Austin Technology Incubator

Lydia McClure joined the Austin Technology Incubator in 2013 as the partner for the University of Texas at Austin Development portfolio. In addition, Lydia is a node instructor for the Southwest NSF I-corps program. Prior to ATI, Lydia was a Venture Partner with Texas Venture Labs. During her career she has identified ways to monetize university research, led a series of early venture competitions and managed two startup accelerator programs. She has a BA in Biochemistry from Carleton College and a PhD in molecular biology from UT Austin where she applied next-generation sequencing techniques to human disease.

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Todd Morrill
Managing Director
QVenture Management Group

Todd Morrill has been building and leading bioscience companies since the first biotech boom in the early 1980s. He has been employee number 500, number 10 and number 2 (several times) of venture-backed startups, as well as a founder of three companies. He spent seven years in investment banking for pharma and biotech, and has worked at multinational pharma, diagnostics and tools companies. His roles have included sales, product management, marketing, R&D, business development and CEO. He has been an independent Board member of three companies.

Todd taught at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley from 2001 to 2009, where he is a Richard C. Holton Teaching Fellow. His courses included Entrepreneurship in Biotechnology; Mergers and Acquisitions; and Entrepreneurship. He has taught in the Intel Program in China and Japan, the Malaysia/UCSF program, and in biotech programs in Estonia, Australia and Abu Dhabi. Todd received an MBA from Haas and his BA in Biology, with Highest Honors, from Dartmouth College. He returned to teaching in 2013 because of his excitement with the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program.

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Dean Chang
National Faculty Representative
I-Corps

Dean Chang is committed to helping students and researchers discover and cultivate the innovator and entrepreneurial mindset inside of them. He is the University of Maryland’s (UMD) founding Associate VP for the Academy for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (AIE), reporting to the President and Provost and tasked with engaging every student in all 12 colleges in innovation. He is also a lead PI and instructor in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) I-Corps Node program.

Prior to UMD, Dean spent 15 years in Silicon Valley where he served dual roles as the Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Gaming Business of Immersion Corporation.  He joined Immersion as employee #4 and helped transform the venture-backed, Stanford University robotics lab spinout into a publicly traded (NASDAQ: IMMR), world-leading licensor of haptics technology embedded in hundreds of millions of products from companies like Microsoft, Apple, BMW, Samsung, and Electronic Arts.  Dean holds over 40 patents, a B.S. degree from MIT and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford, and an MBA from Wharton.

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Lindsey Mitchell

In addition to serving as the Teaching Assistant for the I-Corps L program, Lindsey also manages the logistics of coordinating and conducting the I-Corps programs for the DC regional node. She oversees the region's social media and outreach efforts and assists in the behind-the-scenes work in screening teams, organizing venues, training teaching assistants and planning several regional cohorts per year. Lindsey received her M.Ed in College Student Personnel Administration and has over a decade of experience in event and conference planning.

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Gary Lichtenstein
Principal
Quality Evaluation Design

Dr. Gary Lichtenstein is an expert in mixed-methods research and has participated in research and evaluation studies in STEM education for over a decade. Clients have included the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Learning, and the Center for Advancement of Engineering Education, an NSF funded, a four-year, longitudinal study of cohorts of engineering undergraduates. Dr. Lichtenstein is lead author on a chapter in the Handbook on Engineering Education Research that summarizes national policies and practices related to retention and persistence of underrepresented minorities and women in STEM.

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Cathleen Simons
Senior Research Associate
Quality Evaluation Design

Dr. Cathleen Simons earned her doctorate in biophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. She has extensive experience in higher education policy, analysis, and pedagogy as an accreditation coordinator, institutional researcher, program evaluator, corporate trainer, and adjunct faculty. She has also worked in K-12 education as an assessment specialist. Dr. Simons was the evaluation lead on the I-Corps-L Pilot.

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Sheri Sheppard
Professor
Stanford University

Dr. Sheri Sheppard is a nationally recognized expert on engineering education. She led a three-year study of engineering education, "Educating Engineers," in the United States at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For the last decade, she has been the faculty adviser to the Mechanical Engineering Women's Group at Stanford, which holds an annual seminar series and a welcome program for all female engineers. In 2010, she received the Stanford Gores Award, the university's highest award for excellence in teaching, and in 2014 was selected as a fellow in the prestigious Minerva Project. Dr. Sheppard is a PI of the EpiCenter, an NSF initiative to teach entrepreneurship to engineering students. Dr. Sheppard was instrumental in framing recommendations in the I-Corps-L Pilot report.

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