Engineering education research within the department focuses on understanding and improving the factors that shape student success across the undergraduate and graduate pipeline. This work examines how motivation, sense of belonging, and participation in co-curricular and extracurricular activities influence students' choices, persistence, and academic performance, often in collaboration with colleagues in the College of Education, with the aim of designing interventions that support a more diverse and successful engineering workforce. Complementing this research is a sustained investment in instructional excellence itself, reflected in widely adopted textbooks and course materials that shape how core chemical engineering concepts — such as thermodynamics — are taught, as well as recognition through multiple teaching excellence awards for developing more effective classroom and curricular approaches.
