Tag / research

by shannonchance

Sandra Cruz’s Award-Winning PhD Research Highlights

Scholarly, useful research is the name of the game in Europe!

These are the standards for research published in the European Journal of Engineering Education (EJEE), and they serve as a good guide for researchers in general.

This post sheds light on what makes a conference paper stand out. It shares the story of soon-to-be-Dr Sandra Ieri Cruz Moreno, who won the top research award from the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) in 2025.

SEFI’s special interest group on Engineering Education Research featured the work Sandra and I have done last week, in an online workshop, and the information is worth sharing more broadly — so here it is!

Workshop overview

Last week, Sandra (my PhD supervisee) and I presented this workshop as part of the SEFI@work learning series. We reported on one strand of Sandra’s PhD thesis research.

During the workshop, Sandra engaged the audience with questions about their own research to help transfer the successful part of our experience to the researchers who attended.

The workshop was great practice for Sandra’s viva voce (called a ‘dissertation defense’ in the USA), scheduled for March 10.

Unfortunately, vivas are closed-door events in Ireland. That means our colleagues can’t attend, so this online workshop was the main way to let our SEFI community know about the amazing work Sandra has done.

Research award

At the annual SEFI conference in Tampere, Finland, this past September, our paper Evolving gender dynamics in teamwork experiences among female engineering students in PBL settings was recognized with the sole “Best Research Paper” award.

I reported on the overall SEFI conference and my surprise and elation at winning this award in a September blogpost.

I accepted the award on Sandra’s behalf at SEFI 2025.

Now, the organizers of the online workshop asked us to share some secrets to our success. That was tricky!

SEFI advertised widely, and over 80 people registered to attend.

We hadn’t set out to win an award, just to make a scholarly summary of part of Sandra’s thesis study!

Although it felt intimidating to explain how to win, we went in with the confidence that the paper had been nominated in all three categories it was eligible for last year, and each category has a separate panel of judges.

We were beyond delighted — and completely surprised — to win.

It helped reassure us that the thesis research was ready to wrap up and report.

Workshop content

You can watch a video of the workshop, to hear in Sandra’s own words what is most interesting and valuable about her work and her research process:

And you’re able to download Sandra’s slides, to jump straight into the content, by clicking here:

One slide from Sandra’s presentation.

Sandra’s achievements

I couldn’t be prouder of Sandra and all she has accomplished in four short years. Since starting her doctoral studies in January 2022, she has delivered two babies into the world and developed an award-winning research study and a fully written thesis.

Sandra’s special contributions include introducing sociological techniques and perspectives into engineering education research. She has broadened the focus of our discourse on the usefulness and applicability of phenomenology as a research method, and she has shed valuable new light regarding the experiences of female students in our engineering courses at Technological University Dublin.

The findings of her PhD research hold applicability well beyond TU Dublin, however. They show us how the social dynamics of teamwork evolve over time — how students develop meaningful friendships that help them personally and professionally.

Sandra used the “Gender at Work” framework to better understand students’ experiences with Problem-Based Learning and other collaborative learning approaches. Using this framework, she found that the 22 women I’d interviewed (longitudinally over a period of four years):

  • had experienced uneven access to engineering content before entering university, 
  • lacked female engineers in their families who could serve as role models,
  • experienced some biased team dynamics that influenced what jobs got assigned to whom by the team, and that the need to prove themselves on teams grew less but nonetheless persisted across their four-year matriculation, and 
  • received increased recognition for their credibility over time, which helped them challenge stereotypes and shift team dynamics in a favorable direction.


Sandra’s SEFI 2025 paper complemented papers we’ve published and presented at earlier conferences, including:

You can learn more about Sandra’s work in a blog SEFI posted in 2023:

Soon, you’ll be able to read Sandra’s final thesis and learn about the impressive contributions she has made to the literature and to the engineering education research community.

I am honored to call Sardar Cruz Moreno a friend and colleague. I look forward to calling her “Dr” and to watching her flourish in the coming years!

by shannonchance

Join SEFI@work: What Makes Research Papers Stand Out?

Sandra Cruz Moreno and I will be featured in a SEFI@work online workshop on Wednesday, 11 February 2026 13:00 PM – 14:00 PM CET.

The title is: What makes research papers stand out? Insights from SEFI 2025’s Best Research Paper

Sandra and I are hard at work preparing meaningful content about Sandra’s award-winning SEFI paper, which reports one part of her overall PhD thesis/dissertation work.

You can read Sandra’s paper, which SEFI awarded ‘Best Research Paper’ for 2025, here: Evolving gender dynamics in teamwork experiences among female engineering students in PBL settings

Visit this SEFI webpage to register: https://www.sefi.be/2026/01/14/sefiwork-what-makes-research-papers-stand-out-insights-from-sefi-2025s-best-research-paper/

SEFI’s advert for the upcoming event.

I am delighted to discover that about 80 people have registered so far, representing a wide diversity of organizations:

Many thanks to the SEFI Education Research Methods special interest group co-chairs, Dr. Tinne De Laet and Dr. Esther Ventura-Medina, for the invitation to deliver this session, which they will moderate. Thanks also to the SEFI Office, especially Alex Gliga and Klara Ferdova, for their support in organizing and hosting this event.

This photo of Sandra and Shannon in Portugal captures the tone of our upcoming presentation.
by shannonchance

Grab your popcorn! YouTube ethical & sustainable engineering

Our SEFI keynote about socially responsible engineering is now on YouTube!

It opens with the launch of our handbook on teaching ethics in engineering. Next, we discuss a strategy for making the necessary changes in engineering education to address turbulent times.

Below, I share fun pics of SEFI, as posting this is a chance to relive the excitement! From the launch:

A significant — unexpected — highlight of the SEFI conference was receiving the award for the BEST RESEARCH PAPER of the entire conference! I accepted the ward on behalf of my PhD student, soon-to-be Dr Sandra Cruz!

Here I’m being awarded by Professor John Mitchell and congratulated by my co-editors of the European Journal of Engineering Education.

The official photographer captured the conference vibe:

And the SEFI Director General, architect Klara Ferdova, captured and shared other behind-the-scenes moments, like Gillian Saunders-Smit and me at the Moonmin Museum:

And here are Klara’s photos of the keynote! An architect’s eye for structure and composition, Klara has!

And finally, here’s the official SEFI photo, showing the whole happy family!

If you’re interested in teaching engineering well, please join us for next year’s SEFI conference in Prague!

by shannonchance

Material reuse in architecture

This past Friday, I had the distinct pleasure of reviewing studio work and giving architecture students feedback on prototypes they have been developing to reuse scrap materials from the woodworking shops at the School of Architecture, Building and Environment (SABE) at TU Dublin.

A cool transformer-type system that can be moved and easily set-up.

The students are helping support the circular economy, and learning to work together.

This is a vertical architecture studio, comprised of second and third year students.

A corbelled system that can be reconfigured dozens of ways.

Each team as allocated a collection of cast-off wood sheets or wood planks to use to make a small structure. The structure needed to be at least 3 meters in at least one direction.

From the reminders of CNC routing

This architecture studio is led by Marcin Wojcik and Kevin Donovan. The project is also tied to a grant from Ireland’s Housing Authority to study how to modularize materials brought to construction sites, but never used to allow them to be reused elsewhere. Marcin and Kevin are doing the grant-funded project with Noel Brady.

And I am an enthusiastic observer, doing what I can to help my colleagues get more involved in research.

Reviewing the proposal by Group 4.

Overall, the work I saw presented and the level of attentiveness and collegiality among the students were all highly impressive! They have done all this in just three weeks. 

A pavilion for bird watching; intriguing lessons in tension and compression.

I was excited enough about the work I saw to convince Marcin to draft a short conference paper, which he accomplished over the weekend. It’s about the outcomes of this three-week assignment, how it has evolved over the years, and the implications of Friday’s presentations for the grant-funded project.

Kevin and I are editing Marcin’s draft today, so I’d better get to it!

Hope you have enjoyed seeing the students’ collaborative work! I was thrilled they agreed to let me post photos of them and what they designed and constructed.

Working with knots and catenary curves.
by shannonchance

Ready for a Fulbright Award?

I highly recommend applying for a Fulbright Award, to Ireland or elsewhere in the world. I had a Fulbright award to Ireland in 2012-13 that was truly life-changing.

Fulbright U.S. Scholar Awards are opportunities available to U.S. professionals, artists & scholars to research/teach, and carry out projects in more than 160 countries worldwide. Those 160+ countries send scholars and students to the USA, as well.

2026-27 U.S. Scholar Program
Deadline: September 15, 2025, 5pm EDT

2026-27 U.S. Student Program Deadline: October 7, 2025, at 5pm Eastern Time

Fulbright U.S. Student Awards are grants for U.S. citizens to complete postgraduate research or study over the course of 1 year in Ireland.

by shannonchance

Our new Architectural Engineeing curriculum at NewGiza University

NewGiza University (NGU), located on the outskirts of Cairo, just released a video of me discussing the Architectural Engineering curriculum that I co-designed with Professor Emanuela Tilley, starting back in 2020: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMVKR4HvVQ0/?igsh=MWo1dDE3cTB4Y2cxeQ== (opens in Instagram):

Because of the pandemic, I did not have a chance to visit NGU before we started designing the curriculum. In fact, I didn’t get to visit until this past February, 2025, when I travelled over with two staff from UCL to provide feedback on the quality of the program’s delivery.

It was a whirlwind tour, considering that I arrived a day later than expected due to a British Airline delay.

In my two working days there, I got to observe the program the public relations folks at NGU captured the footage on this video.

Designing this curriculum, via a contract between Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) and University College London Consultants (UCLC) which pays for hours out of my timetable each semester, has been a real joy. It has required me to stretch, been , and develop new communication skills to explain complex concepts to people from a culture and language much different from my own.

Visiting the program and meeting the people who are delivering the content and the amazingly dedicated studentswho are forging the way by implementing a brand new curriculum has definitely been a highlight of 2025.

Many tanks to Dean Aly and the programme staff for welcoming us and helping us feel at home!

We three visitors also got a chance to tour the brand new Egyptian museum, lead by NGU’s architectural history, teacher. The experience was truly eye-opening and full of intrigue.

I look forward to a chance to visit NGU and Egypt again soon!

I have to say, none of this would’ve been possible without the Marie Curie fellowship I got to spend 2018 and 2019 working at UCL. The bonds I made with the folks at UCL in the Centre for Engineering Education have made such a difference in my and personal and professional life.

Being part of UCL has been so incredibly good for me, and good also for my employer, TU Dublin.

I am so honored to have had the chance to build an architecture program in Egypt and work with the people there who seek to build a stronger community of architects in Egypt. Thank you so much John Mitchell and Emanuela Tilley, for including me in this incredible project!

by shannonchance

Active Learning underway!

We’re about to start the third and final day of the 2025 PAEE/ALE conference in Porto, Portugal.

It’s an annual meet up of Project Approaches in Engineering Education (PAEE), which has an active community of members particularly across Portuguese and Spanish speaking parts of the world, and Active Learning in Engineering (ALE), on whose Steering Committee I serve.

I’ve attended PAEE/ALE in San Sebastián, Spain, in 2015. And in Alicante, Spain (where I was a keynote speaker), in 2023. And in San Andreas Island, Columbia, in 2024.

It’s a small and energetic gathering—just the right size for getting to know people and have deeply meaningful chats and learning sessions.

At this year’s event, I chaired a session and delivered a paper on a bingo game I developed with Mike Murphy, Celina Pinto Leão, Mircea Toboșaru, and Mary Doddy Nolan. We decided to perfect the game during a workshop I delivered at the 2025 SEFI Ethics Spring Symposium that I hosted at TU Dublin, and to publish it for others to use. I’ll post materials once they are ready for wide-spread use.

The game is designed to help engineering educators expand the ways they conceptualize integrating ethics into the courses they teach. In the workshop, we explore integrating environmental and social sustainability, EDI, ethical theories and codes.

A day after the paper presentation, I ran a workshop with Inês Direito to test the game. The group shown below had such fun, and benefitted from having 90 minutes allocated to our workshop (thanks for that Diana Mesquita and team!).

Bingo! testing crew

I also had a chance to deliver, with Inês’ help, a workshop on securing international fellowships. This topic always gets a warm welcome from colleagues eager to learning about funding sources and tips for winning awards.

The PAEE/ALE 2025 keynotes have been outstanding (as usual with this conference)!

Keynote addresses by Xiangyun Du, the local teaching excellence center, and Jamie Gurganus were packed intriguing insights.

Professor Xiangyun DU’s fascinating keynote address.

Reconnecting with ALE Steering colleagues Miguel Roma, Valquiria Villas-Boas, and Jens Myrup Pedersen, (and Fernando Rodriguez and Luciano Soares who didn’t get to join us this year) is always a pleasure.

PAEE/ALE has been a highlight of my academic year the past few years.

Many, many thanks to this year’s host, the knowledgeable and vivacious Diana Mesquita, and the PAEE leadership including Rui Lima, for making the 2025 event possible.

If you’re interested in Active Learning pedagogies, consider joining us next year for the 2026 conference in Japan!

Fun
and games!
Sessions
with breakouts.
Learning
with and from colleagues!
reception.
Welcoming new PhD researchers.
Hearing from experts.
Emerging research stars.
Global leaders.

by shannonchance

Reflections on the 2025 SEFI Ethics Spring Symposium: A Gathering of Global Engineering Ethics Educators

I’m honoured to have hosted a very successful 2025 SEFI Ethics Spring Symposium. 

From March 24–26, my colleagues and I gathered at the Royal Marine Hotel in the charming seaside town of Dún Laoghaire, Ireland, for our small and cosy annual symposium. Mother nature blessed us with glorious weather, tasty and healthy food, gorgeous natural and architectural surroundings, an enchanting historic hotel, and new and renewed friendships.

Diana Martin, Mircea Tobosaru, and I organised the programme and all the details, demonstrating that collaboration is key to flourishing!

With 35 delegates from across the globe, this wasn’t just another academic conference—it was a meeting of minds and a celebration of our shared commitment to engineering ethics education.

Soaking in the surroundings, past and present, with a tour by Roland Tormey.

The symposium’s main goal? Strengthening our collective capacity to teach ethics to future engineers. A key focus was the Routledge International Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education (RIHEEE)—a major collaborative effort by the SEFI Ethics special interest group. We reflected on what is presented in the book and considered how to extend its themes, translate into impactful teaching practices, and generate discussion more broadly in the places we live and work. 

Opening the Symposium and introducing the handbook.

A Program Packed with Thought-Provoking Conversations

Over three days, we immersed ourselves in a mix of keynotes, workshops, and panels, tackling big questions from multiple angles:

Keynotes that Challenged and Inspired

  • Mary Nolan explored the role of care ethics in engineering, pushing us to think beyond traditional engineering thinking.
  • Paula Tomi examined the nature of truth, a concept that sits at the heart of both engineering and ethics.
  • Tom Børsen introduced us to techno-anthropology, showing how it intersects with engineering ethics education.
Keynote by Paula Tomi

Workshops that Sparked Debate and Collaboration

  • Care Ethics—How do we broaden engineers’ notion of responsibility?
  • AI Experimental Philosophy—How can philosophy guide us in using and developing artificial intelligence?
  • The Archimedean Oath—Should engineers take an ethical oath, much like doctors do?
  • Quantitative Methods & Ethics—How can we effectively describe and report ethical impact?
Peer-to-peer learning in action. Tom Børsen, to the right, was the co-lead editor of the handbook. Takehara joined us from Japan, and Miguel from Spain.

Panel Discussions: Making Ethics Education More Practical

Our panelists had a specific challenge: dive into a self-selected sections of RIHEEE and critically assess its themes. We asked: What patterns do you see across the set of chapters in your section? What’s missing? How can can educators make use of the content? How can we help them do that? Can we translate theoretical insights into tangible strategies that can be applied in classrooms and institutions worldwide yet still reflect local culture and values?

Panel with Rachel Harding, Aaron Johnson, Magnus Kahrs (and Valentina Rossi, not shown)
Panel on engineering ethics accreditation
Panel on Interdisciplinary Perspectives with Katherine Looby, Ronny Kjelsberg, Gaston Meskens, and Sandra Cruz Moreno.

There were so many very special aspects, including exploring care ethics in depth and applying care ethics, and the walking tour was truly spectacular.

A Literary and Cultural Interlude

Roland Tormey’s literary walking tour of Dún Laoghaire was a highlight for us all. We took a step back and immersed ourselves in the cultural richness of our surroundings. For many of us, this blend of intellectual and cultural exploration reinforced the broader ethical dimensions of engineering—how our work is always connected to society, history, and place.

Sunshine and good vibes galore!

Global Voices, Local Impact

The symposium truly reflected the international nature of engineering ethics education. We had voices from across Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia, with universities ranging from UCL and the University of Michigan to EPFL. At the same time, there was strong local representation, with a third of the attendees based in Ireland—TU Dublin, DCU, ATU, and Engineers Ireland all playing an active role. A special shoutout to my TU Dublin colleagues—Sandra Cruz Moreno, Marek Rebow, Rachel Harding, Mike Murphy, and recent PhD grads Diana Adela Martin and Darren Carthy—whose contributions helped everyone feel welcome.

What’s Next?

The energy and ideas sparked at the symposium will propel us forward onto new collaborations, where we apply what we discussed—via research and teaching and leadership and service—and continue building momentum and sharing what we’re learning with our colleagues back home, and indeed worldwide.

For those who couldn’t join us in person, the Routledge International Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education is freely available in an open-access digital format. Whether you’re new to the field or a long-time educator, it’s a must-read:
🔗 RIHEEE Handbook

TU Dublin also just posted a webpage about the Symposium: https://bit.ly/3QQ74zd

For posterity’s sake, I am adding the symposium schedule as it was conducted:

Monday, March 24

09:00-09:30 Welcome and Icebreaker by host Shannon Chance

09:30-10:30 Handbook panel 1 (Foundations) moderated by Roland Tormey with panellists Mircea Tobosaru, Samia Mahé, and Mihaly Héder

10:30-10:50 Coffee break

10:50-11:30 Keynote on Care Ethics by Mary Nolan 

11:30-13:00 Workshop on Care Ethics by Robert Irish, Ana Tebeanu, Sofia Duran, Vivek Ramachandran, Roland Tormey, & Alison Gwynne-Evans

13:00-15:30 Picnic Lunch & Walking tour of Dun Laoghaire led by Roland Tormey

15:30-16:00 Coffee break with snacks

16:00-17:00 Handbook panel 4 (Teaching Methods) moderated by Diana Martin with panellists Valentina Rossi, Aaron Johnson, Magnus Kahrs, and Rachel Harding

17:00-17:30 Wrap-up with synthesising activity

19:00 Dinner outing with colleagues departs from the hotel lobby

Tuesday, March 25

09:00-10:00 Handbook panel 6 (Accreditation) moderated by Shannon Chance with panellists Leah Ridgway, Louise O’Gorman, Alison Gwynne-Evans, and Marek Rebow

10:00-10:40 Keynote on Truth by Paula Tomi 

10:40-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:15 Workshop on AI experimental philosophy by Krzysztof Sołoducha

12:15-13:00 Ethics SIG session led by Diana Martin and Mircea Tobosaru

13:00-14:00 Lunch 

14:00-15:00 Handbook panel 3 (Specific Disciplines) moderated by Tom Børson with panellists Jacob Baneham, Miguel Romá, Mike Murphy, and Rhythima Shinde 

15:00-15:20 Coffee break with snacks

15:20-16:40 Workshop on the Archimedean Oath by Valentina Rossi 

19:00 Dinner outing with colleagues departs from  the hotel lobby

Wednesday, March 26 

09:00-10:00 Handbook panel 2 (Interdisciplinary Perspectives) moderated by Roland Tormey with panelists Sandra Cruz Moreno, Ronny Kjelsberg, Gaston Meskens, and Katherine Looby, with input from Riadh Habash

10:00-11:15 Workshop on Quantitative Methods & Ethics by Matheus de Andrade and Idalis Villanueva Alarcón

11:15-11:30 Coffee break

11:30-12:15 Keynote by Tom Børsen on “Techno-Anthropology and Engineering Ethics Education” 

12:15-13:15 Ethics SIG session led by Diana Martin and Mircea Tobosaru

13:15-15:00 Lunch and physical activity

15:00-16:00 Handbook panel 5 (Assessment) moderated by Tom Børsen with panellists Takehara Shinya, Celina Leão, Ana Voichita Tebeanu, and Mary Nolan 

16:00-16:20 Coffee break with snacks

16:20-17:30 Ethics SIG synthesis session led by Diana Martin and Mircea Tobosaru

19:00 Dinner outing with colleagues departs from the hotel lobby

by shannonchance

Explore the New Handbook for Engineering Ethics Teaching

The Routledge International Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education, chock full of helpful research on teaching engineering students about ethics, will be published on December 4, 2024! 

Over the past two years, I have edited this book in collaboration with five outstanding ethics scholars. Seeing it through to completion is one of the proudest achievements of my professional life.

The project involved 105 authors from around the globe. I led it alongside Tom Børsen, who immediately embraced the idea of a handbook.

The digital version of the book is already available at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003464259

We paid the publication fee so that you can read it for free! We wanted to give everyone with a digital device an equal chance, regardless of where they live.

Of course, you are also welcome to order a hard-back print copy of the book from the link above. A discount is currently available. Moreover, a paperback version will be available in 18 months.

The book has six sections:

SECTION 1: Foundations of engineering ethics education (7 chapters)

SECTION 2: Interdisciplinary contributions to engineering ethics education (6 chapters)

SECTION 3: Ethical issues in different engineering disciplines (5 chapters)

SECTION 4: Teaching methods in engineering ethics education (7 chapters)

SECTION 5: Assessment in engineering ethics education (6 chapters)

SECTION 6: Accreditation and engineering ethics education (5 chapters)

The editorial team is pictured below (left to right): Gunter Bombaert, Roland Tormey, Shannon Chance, Tom Børsen, Diana Adela Martin, and Thomas Taro Lennerfors. It’s been a dream team!

This handbook was a project of the Ethics Special Interest Group (SIG) of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI). SEFI members made it possible by contributing to their transcontinental networks of colleagues.

We editors started by sending out a survey, as far and wide as possible, to find out who was working in the field and might be interested in authoring a chapter. We held online workshops to identify what topics should be included and structured them into chapters. We invited a lead author for each chapter and asked the lead to invite three others to co-write the chapter. We asked that the chapter team have people from different places on it, and we aimed for transcontinental teams where feasible. We also asked the lead to consider specific people who had expressed interest in the topic. Our team ultimately included people of diverse levels and fields of experience and good geographical distribution. The people on many of the teams had not worked together before. Many lead authors served as mentors for early career researchers. We held numerous meetings online with the led authors of each section to cross-check, coordinate, and challenge our own thinking. The editorial team met weekly throughout most of the process, and the final result reflects the strong and knowledgeable engagement of many leaders in the field. Our team conducted a rigorous internal peer review, and the publisher conducted its own peer review twice during the process. Here’s what the reviewers said about our proposal:

“I believe this is a state-of-the-art milestone.”

“The lead authors are the key people in this vibrant community, and they have recruited a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of international authors for the handbook. This is the right time and the right people. It’s the dream team.”

“This would become the resource in this field.”

The final result is a true masterpiece, and I hope you’ll read at least some of it because the content is quite fascinating!

The Ethics SIG also hosts a Spring School around Easter every year, and this year, the theme of the Spring Symposium is “Growing the Field of Engineering Ethics Education and Research as a Community.” I am the local host for this March 2025 event, and we will spend the three days celebrating, applying, and extending the handbook’s content. Learn more about the Symposium and submit your interest in attending at this link: https://forms.gle/WngZ3DMi97FLtQaZ8

Date:         24-26 March 2025 (9:00-17:30 each day)

Location:     Royal Marine Hotel, Dún Laoghaire, Ireland

Organiser:   Shannon Chance (shannon.chance@tudublin.ie)

Capacity:     50 participants maximum

Whether or not you can join us in Dún Laoghaire, I hope you’ll peruse the content of this outstanding new resource and reach out to the editors and authors if you’d like more information or to get involved in what we do!

I am confident that this handbook will make a significant global contribution to engineering education. I therefore urge all engineering and architecture educators to become more explicitly involved in learning and teaching about ethics.

by shannonchance

Elected: SEFI Board of Directors

The European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) announced the results of recent voting. I’ve been elected to serve on this prestigious organization’s Board of Directors for three years! Many thanks to Mike Murphy, former SEFI President and TU Dublin Dean, for prompting me to run, and to Una Beagon (TU Dublin), Inês Direito (UCL), and Tom Børsen (Aalborg University) for formally endorsing my candidacy. This post gives you a peek into my:

Colleagues on the Board

I met several other candidates at an August orientation meeting organized by the SEFI Director General, Klara Ferdova, including incoming Board members Stefan Krusche (who created a really inspiring candidate video!) and Annoesjka Cabo.

Darren Carthy, from Engineers Ireland, who earned his PhD at TU Dublin and has been part of TU Dublin’s CREATE research group with me, was also elected.

Helena Kovacs, an author of a chapter in the handbook I recently edited, was too.

I’ll serve under the leadership of the effervescent Nagy Balázs (President) and the energetic and accomplished Emanuela Tilley and Greet Langie (Vice Presidents). Sitting SEFI Board members who I look forward to collaborating with include Inês Direito and Roland Tormey.

Shannon Chance facilitating a workshop at SEFI 2024

Motivation to Serve

I first joined this community in 2012 at the SEFI conference in Thessaloniki, where I enjoyed a welcome so warm and enthusiastic that I decided to stay in Europe and embrace engineering education research (EER). I left behind a tenured professorship in the United States to join this vibrant community dedicated to enhancing learning and teaching engineering across Europe, and indeed influencing how engineering is taught far beyond Europe’s borders. 

Group photo of participants (mentors and mentees) at the 2024 SEFi Doctoral Symposium, organized by Jonte Bernhard, Kristina Edström, Tinne de Laet, and Shannon Chance.

In my letter of motivation for this role, I highlighted three recent experiences that helped me prepare for the Board:

  • Chairing REEN – as part of the Research in Engineering Education Network’s Governing Board and its Chair for multiple years, I grew new skills and made positive contributions by significantly expanding REEN’s geographic representation, leading capacity-development initiatives (spawning EERN-Africa and organizing a series of capacity-building workshops for the nascent organization), supporting the delivery of REES (our bi-annual Symposium), and co-organizing events like the Big-EER Meet Up at the outset of the pandemic.
  • Cultivating our community’s publication skills by serving SEFI’s European Journal of Engineering Education as Deputy Editor, organizing and delivering workshops and doctoral symposia to the SEFI community to support newcomers to EER, guest editing special issues of IEEE Transactions on Education and the Australasian Journal of Engineeirng Educaiton (AJEE), and mentoring emerging scholars (as an individual and via SEFI and JEE).
  • Engaging with SEFI as a participant and leader – serving on the steering boards of the special interest groups for Ethics, Diversity and Inclusion, and Research Methods, helping organize the SEFI 2024 conference at TU Dublin, attending and presenting at Spring Schools, and – most recently – serving as co-editor of the forthcoming Routledge International Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education.

I sought to join the Board to:

  • Nurture collaboration and facilitate more mentoring and capacity-building programmes for teachers and researchers in engineering education.
  • Help educators infuse ethics and sustainability across engineering curricula.
  • Enhance diversity and inclusion in SEFI – for instance by developing additional channels for bringing people from Eastern European countries into SEFI and supporting SEFI members from low-income countries in participating fully in SEFI activities.

With my collaborative, can-do spirit — and my keen passion for supporting students’ design, epistemological, and identity development — I will use the EER projects I have underway on these topics to inform and enhance my work with the SEFI Board.

Candidacy Video

You can view my candidacy video, which I recorded between conferences in Mexico during summer 2024: