The Sterling Olmsted award honors those who have made distinguished contributions to the development and teaching of liberal arts in engineering education. It is the highest award given by the Liberal Education Division of the ASEE.
On behalf of the 2009 Olmsted Award Committee (Caroline Carvill, Gary Downey, and Joseph Herkert), I am pleased to announce that the winner of the 2009 Sterling Olmsted Award is Dr. Sarah Pfatteicher of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Currently Research Professor and Assistant Dean in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Sarah has a distinguished record of accomplishment in the scholarship of administration, teaching, research, and service in engineering education. Chair of the Liberal Education Division in 2002-2003, Sarah is the ultimate example of a critical participant in engineering education. She has cleverly and persistently found innumerable ways of representing liberal education in engineering education arenas, from working with individual students and classrooms to serving in and leading a range of curricular and policy development activities.
A Smith College graduate in physics and mathematics, Sarah completed her graduate work in the history of technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, taking the M.A. in 1990 and Ph.D. in 1996.
Sarah served in the College of Engineering for eleven years. Initially conducting assessment and evaluation research on education-related projects, she was promoted to Assistant Dean where she led many projects in curricular and policy development. Some of her key accomplishments include taking over supervision of the Introduction to Engineering Design course, redesigning pedagogy to expand access to 350 seats, increasing student-faculty contact with no increase in faculty workload, and adding sections in both Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) and Diversity Affairs; administering assessment plans for accreditation in thirteen programs across nine departments, and supervising four accreditation reviews; institutionalizing an interdisciplinary course designation and facilitating teaching partnerships across departments in the College; streamlining supervision of the progress toward the degree for 3,000 undergraduate students; establishing new policies for reviewing applications for admissions and scholarships; developing two resource guides for encouraging diversity in hiring (now frequently consulted); collaborating to develop a diversity plan for the College; coordinating the development of new first-year curriculum requirements; serving on the leadership team to redesign the College for the year 2010 and afterwards; and, most recently, developing with colleagues in civil engineering and rural sociology a new Certificate in Integrated Studies in Science, Engineering, and Society, as well as developing and teaching a course on sustainability.
During this time, Sarah has also been serving as a member of the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, an affiliate of the Department of Gender and Womenıs Studies, Honorary Fellow of the Department of History of Science, and Research Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. In these roles she has maintained an active research program on engineering education and the history of ethics and professionalism in engineering, particularly related to engineering disaster response. Of her more than twenty publications, her "Depending on Character: The ASCE Shapes its First Code of Ethics" was awarded best paper of the year in the Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice.
Somehow in the midst of all this Sarah has found time to serve on the Boards of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology and the National Institute of Engineering Ethics, as well as in other organizational roles. She also currently serves on the ASEE task force "Engineering Education for a Global Economy".
Finally, and for the Committee most compellingly, while serving as Assistant Dean Sarah devoted endless hours working with students in crisis, preserving the academic integrity of the College and University yet helping students both reaffirm their dreams and refocus on fulfilling them.
Please join me in thanking Dr. Sarah Pfatteicher her for her distinguished scholarly service and congratulating her as the winner of the 2009 Olmsted Award.
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