The founding dean of Campbell’s School of Engineering will be the next leader of the American Society for Engineering Education.
Dr. Jenna Carpenter was elected ASEE president-elect, the national organization announced in February. Carpenter will serve a one-year term as president-elect beginning in June, followed by a full year as ASEE president. ASEE is a global society of individual, institutional and corporate members whose vision is “excellent and broadly accessible education empowering students and engineering professionals to create a better world.”
“It is such an honor to be able to work with ASEE’s great board, members and staff to continue the work of advancing engineering and engineering technology education,” Carpenter said. “ASEE offers its members a wide range of opportunities to share best practices, develop new programs and ideas, learn new skills, and explore new avenues of research.”
Carpenter has been an ASEE member since 1998. She has received the honor of Fellow Member and has won the Sharon Keillor Award for Women in Engineering Education, the Outstanding Zone II Campus Representative Award, and the William T. Guy, Jr. Distinguished Educator and Service Award. She currently serves as co-chair of the Engineering Deans Council Undergraduate Experience Committee and chair of the Constitution and Bylaws Committee. She has recently led the ASEE Board in a strategic, multi-year, long-range planning exercise and is a past Vice President of Professional Interest Councils for ASEE.
“Even before the pandemic, there were many challenges facing higher education,” Carpenter said. “But challenges provide opportunities to innovate. Engineering is focused on designing solutions to problems, like the problems of access, equity and inclusion for all students, or the problem of equipping graduates for a rapidly changing workplace. I look forward to working with ASEE to tackle these challenges and more.”
Carpenter began her role as dean and professor of engineering at Campbell in 2015. With a hands-on, project-based approach all four years, Campbell School of Engineering focuses on design and utilizes unique class labs to seamlessly integrate lecture and lab. The program also emphasizes teaming, communication skills, student internships, professional engineering licensure, professional development training and service learning.
The School has earned a Bronze Award from the ASEE Diversity Recognition Program and is a KEEN Partner Institution.
Prior to coming to Campbell, Carpenter was a Wayne and Juanita Spinks Endowed Professor, associate dean for undergraduate studies and director of the Office for Women in Science and Engineering at Louisiana Tech University’s College of Engineering and Science. A Corsicana, Texas, native, Carpenter earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Louisiana Tech and her master’s and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from Louisiana State University, where she was an Alumni Federation Fellow.
Her research focuses on integrated STEM curricula and improving the number and success of women in engineering, with over $4.3 million in funding to date.