What are the main areas of research in Engineering [and Technology] at your institution? What are the Degree Programs offered by Campbell University and what are some of the salient ongoing research projects? 

At Campbell we offer a Bachelor of Science in Engineering with concentrations in Mechanical Engineering (with a manufacturing focus), Chemical Engineering (with a pharmaceutical focus) and Electrical Engineering (with an embedded systems focus). Since we have only a new undergraduate degree program (our inaugural class graduated in May 2020), our primary research focus is engineering education research. We have been very successful in securing federal grants in engineering education research, with approximately 70% of our faculty currently serving as a PI or co-PI on such grants. We do have faculty with other research focus areas such as fluids and communications. Our current projects focus on topics like improving instruction in middle years courses, working to help student formulate an engineering identity, supporting the success of first-generation students and students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

What is the graduation rate of female engineers at Campbell University? What are some programs which may increase enrollment of young female leaders in Engineering?

We have only graduated one class in May 2020, so we don’t have a lot of data yet, but our inaugural class was 32% female. We have worked very hard to attract and retain women students, as well as students from a variety of traditionally underrepresented groups in STEM. Messaging and marketing are important aspects in recruiting a diverse cohort of students. Do your images reflect a diverse group of people, faculty and students? Do you talk about your programs in terms of how a degree in engineering provides you with a broad range of opportunities to make a difference in the world? Do you have a number of women on your faculty and in your leadership positions? Our faculty is 62% female. 80% of our mechanical faculty are women. 100% of our administrators are women. Prospective female students need to see role models, a path for themselves, a welcoming environment where they feel like they belong, and an opportunity to do something with their lives that matters.

What are some of the overall challenges that your institution faces?

Like every institution in the country, we face not only the short-term challenges of running a college program amid a pandemic, but the as-yet unknown longer-term consequences of the pandemic coupled with changing demographics and declining numbers of high school students in the U.S.

We are fortunate to be located in the Research Triangle Region of North Carolina, which I often describe as the Silicon Valley of Engineering. There are hundreds of industries within an hour of our campus in all directions and we have been fortunate to forge many great relationships with many of these companies. We have a rock star industry liaison, Dr. Teresa Ratcliff, past president of the National Society of Professional Engineers. She has done a great job of connecting us with Fortune 100, 200, and 500 companies, as well as government agencies and many smaller local and regional industries. We work hard to get all of our students internships during the summers and to help them secure full-time employment upon graduation. Companies and other organizations sponsor both first-year and senior design projects for our students. We have a very active External Advisory Board. Our industry partners judge design competitions, help our students prepare with Mock Job Interviews, host us for tours of their facilities and more.

How many international branches does Campbell University have in the world?

Campbell has had a campus in Malaysia for over 40 years, with well over 12,000 alumni in Asia. Unfortunately, the higher education landscape has changed in Malaysia in the last decade so that program is closing. We have a strong military presence, with campuses at nearby Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune, as well as a strong online program.

Are there any international partnerships between Campbell University and other schools in Europe, Africa and other regions of the world? 

Not at present, but Campbell does have a number of international students enrolled in both its undergraduate and graduate programs. We are pleased to have several international students in engineering, as well.

What are some of the cutting-edge engineering education advancements at Campbell University during the last few years under your leadership?

Because we have built our new engineering program from scratch, we have tried to be good stewards of our opportunity. First, we do not have selective admissions. Any student admitted to Campbell can major in engineering. For those who are not prepared in mathematics or chemistry, we have an alternate pathway to help them get caught up. Our goal is to weed students into engineering, not weed them out. Second, we have worked to build an innovative 21^st century program, with a strong focus on a hands-on, project-based approach throughout all four years. We teach engineering design freshman year in a robust year-long curriculum featuring four design projects. We weave professional skills like teaming and communications throughout all four years. We teach our classes in unique spaces we call classlabs that integrate lecture and lab into one space, so that classes can move seamlessly between the two in the same class period. We have small classes, no more than 24 students, taught by real faculty who were hired because they are outstanding teachers. This is very different from the standard model of a large lecture section taught by a graduate student, with lab on a different day in a different room taught by a different person. That model doesn’t provide much opportunity to marry theory and application, nor does it provide rich opportunities for collaborative teams and one-on-one faculty mentoring. We also place a strong emphasis on professional development training outside of class, offered through our national engineering student organizations, and service learning that reaches out to a variety of K12 groups in the region and state. Lastly, we value professional engineering licensure, so we pay for a study course and for our students to take the Fundamentals of Engineering or FE exam, the first step to licensure, their senior year. With our inaugural graduating class, approximately 90% of them took the FE exam and we were very pleased that our pass rates were on par with the national average.

Can you share with us some of the approaches that Campbell University is implementing to sustain growth in its Engineering College and retain a constant growth of its student body in addition to ethnic and gender diversity?

We work very hard at recruiting a diverse cohort of students. We send teams of our students to a variety of K12 schools and community colleges in the region to do hands-on projects and talk about our engineering program. We also host groups from all over the state for similar activities on campus. We have hosted a number of regional and state-wide events, such as the North Carolina FIRST Robotics State Championship, which brings over 1000 high school students to our campus, in addition to their parents, mentors, coaches and judges. We host a summer Engineering Camp. We converted our camp to a virtual format this past summer and had far more interested students from across the nation that we could accommodate. We host Engineering Days during the year in conjunction with campus visitation days for prospective students, where they get to learn about our program and participate in hands-on projects as part of a team. This year, we have started offering virtual Engineering Days and had tremendous interest, with students from as far away as California and New England attending.

What are some of the initiatives that you have undertaken to promote diversity in engineering education? How do you leverage your experience writing Rising to the Top?

We start talking about culture, climate, implicit bias and its impact with our first-year students (I personally talk with all of our first-year engineering seminar classes about these topics). We frame this conversation in terms of effective teams, to help them see immediate application to their own success. We have a Society of Women Engineers student section for which I am the faculty advisor. We encourage all of our students to join and have a very diverse group of students who both attend our meetings and who go to the national conference with us each year. We are working to establish a National Society of Black Engineers student section this year. We host external speakers for all of our engineering professional society meetings and pay careful attention to hosting a wide variety of diverse speakers at these events. We host an event for the Coastal Pines Girl Scout Council each year where our students serve as mentors for the girls during multiple design challenges, and work with some of the high schools in our region that have large numbers of underrepresented minority students. Our faculty and staff are reading and discussing a variety of articles this year in our weekly meetings focused on racism and bias in higher education, with particular attention to systemic issues and how we can address these issues for our students. I am working with a campus-wide group on similar efforts focused on educating the campus about issues of systemic racism in the K16 system.

In your opinion, what are some of significant issues/topics that need to be addressed by the global engineering community and particularly by Engineering Deans, in order to further strengthen inter regional communication and continue to globalize this field of study?

One of the most challenging issues facing our global community is recruiting and retaining a more diverse cohort of student to engineering, thinking very broadly here about diversity. In the US and many other countries, we still do a poor job of attracting women and traditionally underrepresented minorities to engineering. Yet in the U.S., both of these demographics make up an increasing percentage of high school graduates and together constitute the majority of college-age students in the nation. If we can’t figure this out, our pool of engineering graduates will plummet and that lack of talent will put our nation and other nations at huge risk of not being able to address the complex global challenges we all face.

How has GEDC helped your University achieve the goal of making your institution a more global environment?

We need to provide more of our students with authentic global experiences during their undergraduate careers. Campbell has a National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenge Scholars Program and one of the five competencies that students must develop in this program is a global competency. Like the Grand Challenges of Engineering, the problems our students will work on during their careers and many of the companies they will work for will be global. We have already had students complete summer internships abroad. We have had student design teams partner with non-profit organizations overseas and spend their spring break abroad, working with the local groups to solve engineering problems around battery issues and airstrip maintenance. We have had senior design teams each of the last two years work on a global design project that involves traveling abroad to implement their design. But these experiences are not something that all students have. The GEDC helps us prepare our graduates to be competitive in the global marketplace upon graduation. For example, we were fortunate to have one of our undergraduates lead one of the global student design teams in the recent Thriving Online virtual design competition held in conjunction with the GEDC Industry Forum. It was truly a transformational experience and I hope that the GEDC will offer a similar opportunity every year as I think we will have many more students eager to participate.

What are your top five priorities as a dean and where do you plan to take the Faculty of Engineering five years from now?

Our first priority is to complete our initial accreditation visit with ABET. We want to continue to grow our programs and perhaps add another undergraduate concentration in civil, biomedical or computer engineering. We have already begun talking with other groups on campus about starting an interdisciplinary master’s degree focused on innovation and design. It would potentially involve engineering, entrepreneurship, perhaps our law school, health science programs, etc. Since Raleigh is one of the top five cities in the nation in terms of start-ups, we would like to develop a program that could be offered online or on weekends and that would target the needs of this population. At some point, once we have rounded out our offerings, we want to build a new building to house them all under one roof. We have fantastic, innovative facilities at present so we aren’t in a hurry to move, but we will do so eventually. After that, we should probably take advantage of the opportunity to catch our breath!