The graphic above indicates that NCEER Scholars are drawn from existing programs at Northwestern: the Segal Design Institute (Segal) and several NSF-funded projects: the VaNTH Engineering Research Center (ERC) in Bioengineering Educational Technologies, the National Center for Nanotechnology Learning and Teaching (NCLT), the Center for Connected Learning (CCL), and the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC), all of which have components at Northwestern.
NCEER's mission is to catalyze the transformation of engineering education. NCEER will serve as an organizational unit for Northwestern's work in improving engineering education locally, nationally, and globally. NCEER will build a community that carries out leading research on how to educate engineering students as adaptive experts who can predict and solve global technological challenges. NCEER will support interdisciplinary research in engineering education, cultivating relationships within the engineering school, across schools at Northwestern, and with other universities with similar aims.
NCEER co-directors Ann McKenna and Rob Linsenmeier
NCEER will also be an authoritative resource on engineering education research, acting as the lead organization disseminating new knowledge about engineering education. NCEER will promote pedagogical and curricular change in engineering through innovative technology and other means. As part of their education, Northwestern students will be participants both in evaluating innovations and helping researchers develop new innovations. NCEER will create the infrastructure needed to carry out and evaluate large-scale experiments in engineering education. Thus, NCEER will be the premiere research community that investigates engineering thinking and how to cultivate this aptitude in students.
