Five members of the Department of Technology Leadership and Innovation ─ Paul Asunda, assistant professor; Scott Bartholomew, assistant professor; Todd Kelley, associate professor; Nathan Mentzer, associate professor; and Greg Strimel, assistant professor ─ won the Gerhard Salinger Award For Enhancing I-STEM Education Through Technological/Engineering Design-Based Instruction. The award recognizes the professors’ research in engineering design thinking, student learning (spanning from kindergarten to college graduate), and alternative forms of assessment, design thinking and self-directed learning.
Nominees were judged on the extent to which their work exemplified, promoted, investigated or enhanced teaching and learning in the STEM disciplines through:
- Use of technological/engineering design-based instructional practices to effectively integrate STEM; or
- Contributions to the understanding of successful practices in technological/engineering design and their outcomes at the K-12 level.
Asunda, Bartholomew, Kelley, Mentzer and Strimel have received 10 grants in K-12 STEM education, worth nearly $10 million. They have collectively published 61 refereed articles, won 10 research and scholarship awards and have been honored 15 times for excellence in teaching and/or service.
The Salinger Award is sponsored by the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association (ITEEA). It is presented annually to an individual or team of collaborators whose work has exemplified, promoted, investigated and/or enhanced teaching and learning in STEM through the effective application of technological/engineering design activity. The award was created in honor of Dr. Gerhard Salinger, program officer at the National Science Foundation from 1989 to 2014, whose work to promote the use of engineering design activity and whose advocacy for technology and engineering education has widely influenced STEM education.
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