First-Hand:History of an ASEE Fellow - Stacy Klein-Gardner, Ph.D.

Structured Outline

History of an ASEE Fellow

Stacy S. Klein-Gardner, Ph.D.

As of July 23, 2018

Birthplace: Columbia, SC

Birth date: September 14, 1970

Family:

My family has been in the United States since the early 1600s, primarily located in the southeastern portion of the US. Prior to that we immigrated mostly from England and Germany. To my knowledge, I do not have any family members who also work in engineering education.

Education:

After graduating from Oxford High School in Oxford, MS, I completed a bachelor of science in engineering from Duke University with a double major in biomedical and electrical engineering. I earned a master’s of biomedical engineering from Drexel University with a focus on cardiac ultrasound edge detection. I then earned a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Vanderbilt University with a focus on cardiac MRI.

Employment:

As she was completing her doctorate in 1996, Dr. Klein-Gardner began teaching at the high school level at the Harpeth Hall School, an all girls’ school in Nashville, TN. After two years, she moved to the University School of Nashville where she taught full or part time for eight years. During this time, she began teaching Introduction to Engineering at Vanderbilt University. She partnered with the NSF-funded VaNTH Engineering Research Center where she created the Vanderbilt Instruction in Biomedical Engineering for Secondary Science (VIBES) curriculum. She also taught Biomechanics and a graduate level course on how to teach. She served as the associate dean for outreach at the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering from 2007-2010. In 2011, she became the founding director of the national Center for STEM Education for Girls which is housed at the Harpeth Hall School. She held this position until December 2017. Currently she is a senior professional development provider with the Museum of Science in Boston, working on the Engineering is Elementary program. She remains an adjoint associate professor of the practice of biomedical engineering at VUSE.

Research and Scholarship

Dr. Klein-Gardner’s research revolves around the P12 space. Her earlier work drew upon the VaNTH ERC where she developed K12 biomedical engineering curriculum. Later her NSF-funded Research Experiences for Teachers grants became the subject of her research and publications particular in the areas of student motivation, teacher motivation, and teachers as scientists. In 2015, she and her colleagues published the Standards for the Preparation and Professional Development of Teachers of Engineering and their accompanying matrix and literature background. Her most recent work reflects on the STEM Summer Institute developed through the Center for STEM Education for Girls and its impact on the student participants’ understanding of engineering, participation in STEM in college, and their parents’ understanding of and attitude towards engineering.

Philosophy of Engineering Education

It is critical that engineering education begins at the very youngest grades while our children are still natural engineers. Engineering readily serves as the linking subject matter between not only STEM disciplines, but also reading, social studies, geography, art, and other fields. Students should be engaged in authentic engineering design projects that allow them to serve other people and the environment. These types of challenges are more likely to engage female and URM learners and cause them to persist in our field.