2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

1. Carlye Anne Lauff University of Colorado, Boulder [biography]

   Carlye is a 2nd year PhD student in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Design. She is originally from Pittsburgh, PA and received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. At the University of Colorado Boulder, she is advised by Dr. Mark Rentschler and co-advised by Dr. Daria Kotys-Schwartz. For the past two years, she has worked as a Graduate Research Assistant on the NSF-funded project entitled "Cognitive Ethnographies of Engineering Design." In this project, she is studying how design in constructed in different environments to better understand what is needed to ensure successful design projects.

2. Dr. Daria A Kotys-Schwartz University of Colorado Boulder [biography]

   Dr. Daria Kotys-Schwartz is the Director of the Idea Forge—a flexible, cross-disciplinary design space at University of Colorado Boulder. She is also the Design Center Colorado Director of Undergraduate Programs and a Senior Instructor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. She received B.S. and M.S degrees in mechanical engineering 
from The Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Kotys-Schwartz has focused her research in engineering student learning, retention, and student identity development within the context of engineering design. She is currently investigating the impact of cultural norms in an engineering classroom context, performing comparative studies between engineering education and professional design practices, examining holistic approaches to student retention, and exploring informal learning in engineering education.

3. Kevin O'Connor http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7172-1724 University of Colorado Boulder [biography]

   Kevin O’Connor is assistant professor of Educational Psychology and Learning Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. His scholarship focuses on human action, communication, and learning as socioculturally organized phenomena. A major strand of his research explores the varied trajectories taken by students as they attempt to enter professional disciplines such as engineering, and focuses on the dilemmas encountered by students as they move through these institutionalized trajectories. He is co-editor of a 2010 National Society for the Study of Education Yearbook, Learning Research as a Human Science. Other work has appeared in Linguistics and Education; Mind, Culture, and Activity; Anthropology & Education Quarterly, the Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science; the Journal of Engineering Education; and the Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research. His teaching interests include developmental psychology; sociocultural theories of communication, learning, and identity; qualitative methods; and discourse analysis.

4. Prof. Mark Rentschler University of Colorado at Boulder [biography]

   Mark Rentschler received an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, in 2003, where he was a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellow, and a Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, in 2006.
   He is currently an Assistant Professor and Design Center Colorado Founder/Director of Graduate Programs in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO. He also holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Surgery and an affiliate position in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO. Prior to joining the University of Colorado in 2008, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Division of Vascular Surgery at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, and Senior Engineer and Director of Operations at Virtual Incision Corporation, Boston, MA.
   His research is focused on medical device and surgical tool design, tissue mechanics characterization and dynamic contact modeling, robotics and mechatronics, and mechanical design education,.

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.