Cynthia Finelli earns award at Frontiers in Education Conference for being an agent of change

Prof. Cynthia Finelli was presented with the Frontiers in Education (FIE) Helen Plants Award at the 45th Annual Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE 2015) conference. This award is given for the best special (non-traditional) session at the conference. The award-winning session, titled “Agents for STEM change – Articulating the goals of our community,” was presented by Prof. Finelli and five colleagues from around the country (pictured above) at the FIE 2014 conference.

Prof. Finelli’s research is in engineering education, and she currently studies student resistance to active learning, faculty adoption of evidence-based teaching practices, and institutional change. She is currently Faculty Director for Engineering Education Research at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching in Engineering at Michigan, which supports college-wide initiatives in engineering teaching and learnin

In addition to her research, she assists engineering faculty in accomplishing their educational research endeavors and promotes institutional change through faculty professional development. She is also leading efforts to hire engineering education research faculty and develop an engineering education research PhD program.

Prior to joining Michigan in 2003, Prof. Finelli served as Founding Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, Richard L. Terrell Professor of Excellence in Teaching, and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Kettering University. She is a fellow of the American Society of Engineering Education, and earned the Ronald J. Schmitz Award for contributions to the FIE Conference in 2014.

The 45th Annual Frontiers in Education Conference is sponsored by the IEEE Education Society, the IEEE Computer Society, and the ASEE Educational Research and Methods Division. This annual international conference brings together education leaders in engineering, computer science and engineering technology.