School of Engineering Dean Dr. Jenna Carpenter was named the 2023 recipient of the Claire L. Felbinger Award for Diversity and Inclusion from ABET, the recognized U.S. accreditor of college and university programs in applied and natural science, computing, engineering and engineering technology.
The Felbinger Award is given for national leadership in diversity and inclusion and supporting the success of women and other marginalized students, faculty and administrators in STEM education. Carpenter, the founding dean of Campbell’s engineering school and the immediate past president of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) has spent much of her professional career in education focusing on innovative STEM curricula and advocating for the success of women in STEM. The award includes recognition at the upcoming ABET Awards Celebration in the fall and a $10,000 cash prize.
Carpenter has led multiple national efforts for diversity and inclusion, the most recent being a National Science Foundation-funded grant — a collaboration between ASEE and the National Academy of Engineering — focused on helping schools use evidence-based practices in recruiting, admitting, supporting and graduating a more diverse group of engineering students, in terms of pre-college opportunity and preparation. The project, titled “Weaving Students into Engineering versus Weeding Them Out,” an mirrors the School of Engineering’s approach at Campbell.
“This national effort simply mirrors what we have done at Campbell, welcoming a diverse cohort of students into our engineering program in terms of pre-college opportunity and providing the support they need to become outstanding engineers,” Carpenter said. “The key to our success has been the use of evidence-based practices.”
Carpenter was also a co-recipient of the 2022 National Academy of Engineering Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Engineering Technology Education as a co-founder of the Grand Challenges Scholars Program. She has received the ASEE Sharon Keillor Award for Women in Engineering Education and the Women in Engineering ProActive Network Founders Award and Distinguished Service Award. She has been an ABET program evaluator for over a decade and is also past first vice-president of the Mathematical Association of America and past president of WEPAN.
Dreambox Learning named her one of 10 “Women in STEM Who Rock” in 2015 for her TEDx talk, “Engineering: Where are the girls and why aren’t they here.”