By Kimberly Swick Slover
This Q&A is one in a ongoing series of interviews exploring what keeps 窪做惇蹋厙 professors busy insideand outsidethe classroom.
Vicki May is an associate professor at Thayer School of Engineering. She was named the 2013 New Hampshire Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. talks with 窪做惇蹋厙 Now about why she doesnt do lectures, how cool engineering can be, and why she writes for The Huffington Post.
You often say anyone can be an engineer. Why do you believe that?
Too often people think engineers are super smart. A kid who doesnt have a super strong math or science backgroundbut who is a tinkerer and likes to build and make thingscould definitely be a good engineer. Theyll have to learn some math and science eventually, but if theyre persistent enough theyll figure it out.
You describe engineering as fun, creative, inventive, and cool, but you also cite a recent survey showing that most people view engineers as smart and boring and the field as difficult. Are these outdated perceptions?
Many years ago architects and engineers were the same thingmaster builders. The field of engineering has become increasingly specialized, especially at schools and in some companies, and thats made the field more narrow and scientific. But I think science and engineering should be about discovery. The engineers who design and build things and come up with creative solutions for interesting problems have fun and exciting jobs. I think the maker movement is helping to shift engineering back to a broad, inventive field, but well see.
Engineering education is one of your passions, and you work with both high school and college students. What is the most effective approach to teach engineering?
Theres lots of evidence that standing in front of a group and talking at students doesnt typically result in a lot of learning. I try to focus on hands-on, inquiry-based activities in my classes, on exploring questions as opposed to delivering content. Every class I teach has a project. With graduate students its more open-ended; they come up with questions they want to investigate and do their own research projects. With undergraduates we do group projects. Projects are important to me to create context around engineering theories and concepts.
I work with high school students in the summer in my Design It, Build It workshop. I teach them a little about computer-aided design and give them a lot of time to draw for themselves. Its super empowering for them to draw something and then go to the machine shop and cut it and build it.
In the first week, I talked to them about wind energy and then they built wind turbines and measured how much power they generated. They also designed and built gliders. I could have simply talked to them about the principles of aerodynamics, but experimenting with their own gliders and then tying those principles to their gliders, theyre more likely to remember the concepts.
Youre also passionate about changing the demographics of engineering to attract under-represented groups. What is the best way to do this?
This week Im having lunch with a young woman from a very poor background who expressed interest in engineering. She participated in the , which targets disadvantaged schools and brings students here to show them they can go to college, too.
Addressing the needs of students from poor backgrounds with parents who didnt go to college is very different from addressing the needs of students whose parents and grandparents went to Yale or Harvard or 窪做惇蹋厙. They both have the capacity; we just have to support one group a bit more. Theres no easy answer. They need mentors, tutors, role models, more classeswhatever support we can give them.
What drew you to engineering? I grew up on a farm and helped out a lot, so I was comfortable with tools. Girls who have never seen a tool dont tend to go into engineering. I loved math, and back when I was in school, any girl who loved math was told to go to medical school, which I originally planned to do. But I found it wasnt for me. A lot of engineers were in my math classes and eventually I found my way there.
I read your articles in The Huffington Post and wondered how this became an important forum for you.
Im a Public Voices Fellow in 窪做惇蹋厙s OpEd Project this year, which gets people in academe into public forums. You didnt read any of my conference papers, did you?
No, sorry, I didnt.
No one ever does. Thats why I signed up for this, and its been great. I also got hooked up with Ted-Ed and did some lessons that will be turned into animated videos. My passion is teaching, so its been a fun, different thing to do. I think these efforts will have bigger impact than all my conference papers put together.