Stephanie G. Adams

American engineering and academic administrator

Studied at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University

systems engineer, engineering teacher, academic administrator

Quotations with a citation

We also have a responsibility to look at alternative ways to assess what students are learning and the impact of our programs. This vision is clear in my mind, and it drives my decision making about running the department and what I think our role can and should be.

Our work most definitely extends beyond the Jonsson School. In 2020, particularly following protests not seen since the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, the issues of respect and belonging have become much more prominent in the national conversation. In the fields of engineering, computer science and mathematics, women, Black, Hispanic and Native American people simply are not represented according to their presence in the general population.

Recorded without a firm citation

Kept here, labelled, rather than mixed in above.

I was first introduced to the idea of questioning the status quo in the education of engineers by Richard Felder in the early 1990s. From then on, I started to realize that we don’t have to teach the way we were taught, just because it’s always been done that way.

In my opinion, this approach to teaching differently should, in a nutshell, use research to inform practice. We know so much about how to educate students, how students learn, how to best teach, and we are doing a disservice if we are not constantly changing how we teach, how programs are constructed, and how people are trained. We are missing an opportunity if we rely solely on the research without a real, fundamental commitment to the practice.

I think it’s imperative for engineering educators to not only constantly beat the drum about what happens in the engineering classroom, but to also create experiences to increase literacy among the non-engineers.

My current projects focused on graduate student and faculty development, belonging, and intersectionality directly align with the Jonsson School’s and UTD’s strategic initiatives. Additionally, I am also applying the insights from this work to our organizational and programmatic changes at UT Dallas.