One of my PhD teachers, Dr. Dot Finnegan just sent a very kind message to me, saying “Shannon, hope you are well. I am so proud of you and your accomplishments in Ireland.”

“Thank you, Dot,” I replied. “I’m putting my doctoral studies to work every day!”

Indeed, today I’ve worked on the Engineering Ethics Education Handbook I’m co-editing, the curriculum design contract I have with University College London Consultants, and some Deputy Editor work I have for the European Journal of Engineering Education. I also made strides to get our “Birds of a (Different) Feather” pre-conference event organized for the night before the 2023 SEFI conference starts here in Dublin.

I told Dot that I’d been to Hampton Roads briefly this summer, and visited one of the students I previously taught in a summer elective course I used to run for our College of William and Mary.

That was one part of a two-week trip to the USA. After landing, I visited Mom and my aunt briefly before heading to Blacksburg for a symposium on engineering ethics education. That was funded by a grant to Virginia Tech from the National Science Foundation. Thanks Drs. Diana Bairaktarova and Tom Staley for inviting me! I learned loads and got to present our work in the EEE Handbook to the symposium audience.

I also got to catch up with my dear friends Mary Sullivan, a librarian in the building hounding the symposium, and her niece Katie Sullivan Booth. I grew up with Mary and Katie in Price’s Fork right outside Blacksburg. Time with them is always a blessing!

A few attendees at the Virginia Tech event — David Lopez from Barcelona and Inês Direito from London/Aviero (another best friend of mine) — piled into a rental car and trekked straight from Blacksburg to Baltimore to attend the 2023 annual meeting of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

I was part of the international contingent at ASEE, which included Inês and David, as well as Dr. Lelanie Smith and Professors John Mitchell, Euan Lindsay, Jenni Case, and John Heywood.

Our dear Professor Heywood, from Trinity College Dublin, was present with ASEE’s lifetime achievement award. So incredibly well deserved as a small token of appreciation for the foundation John provided for this flourishing community today! He’s a European treasure whose work has touched the world. And, he’s still travelling in his nineties, and always smiling and encouraging others. He is a true inspiration and a lovable person.

At ASEE, I served on a panel that Dr. Aditya Jordi coordinated about the International Handbook of Engineering Education Research (IHEER). Two other associate editors and one of the new Editors-in-Chief of the Journal of Engineering Education served in the panel as well. We discussed the future of engineering education and research on it, globally.

I also presented a paper on one Middle Eastern student’s experiences in engineering education, interpreted using the Hero’s Journey framework. My co-authors on this paper were Drs. Inês Direito and Bill Williams. The paper is “Using the Hero’s Journey monomyth framework to understand students’ engineering experiences”.

I also introduced an audience to the BIM research my BSc students have been doing at TU Dublin. The paper I discussed, “Infusing Research Know-How into the Irish Construction Sector: A Literature Review to Support a Mapping of Digital Construction Knowledge Produced at TU Dublin“, was co-authored with Dr. Barry McAuley.

Following the conference, I took Amtrak back to Virginia, for visits with long-time friends and a bit of sightseeing with my dear aunt, Kitty.

I’m thankful to Dr. Diana Bairaktarova for extending the invitation that really tipped the scales and convinced me to make the transatlantic trip. I’ve scaled back on long-haul flights (due to climate change and jet lag), but reuniting with colleagues, friends, and family made the most of that investment.

There were many more people I’d loved to have seen, and I’ll look for opportunities to visit again, combining business with pleasure to make the most of this precious time on Earth.

Finally, thanks to Dot Finnegan for reaching out to stay in touch. Her message prompted me to post this update. My teachers (including my 4-H and Scout leaders) have been such central parts of my 53 years here on this Earth, and I’d never be what or who I am today without their careful tending. I raise a toast to them all!

I’m having a world of fun, and I couldn’t have realized all this without that PhD from W&M. Thanks Dot, Pam, David, and Mike, for teaching me the skills to make this travelling researcher life possible.

I landed in Dublin to find flowers from my honey–the fit and fabulous Aongus Coughlan. My print copy of IHEER had arrived, hot off the Routledge presses. After a quick nap to relieve the red-eye, Aongus and I scurried to the centre city to meet my financial literacy pal, Eimear O’Neill, who is sheltering from the summer heat (in Barcelona where she lives) here in cool but buzzy Dublin.