Wednesday Night Social Reception Activity

Maria-Isabel Carnasciali, PhD.
Chair, Department of Engineering & Applied Sciences Education Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Tagliatela College of Engineering, University of New Haven, CT.

She obtained her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech and her B.S. from MIT. She teaches the Introduction to Engineering course for first year students and serves as the faculty liaison to the Engineering Living Learning Community.

She has been active in faculty development since her time as a postdoc at the Center for Enhancement of Teaching & Learning at Georgia Tech -- where she developed skills and interests in engineering education research and program assessment methods. During the past 5 years, she has been a PI/Co-PI on several grants aimed at embedding entrepreneurial thinking into the engineering curriculum. As part of this effort, she is one of the lead facilitators for the KEEN ICE Workshops – a 4-day workshop for faculty, held multiple times a year to train faculty in the use of student centered teaching/learning techniques as a means of developing an entrepreneurial mindset in engineering students.

She pursues two areas of research – one related to mechanical engineering and the other related to engineering education. Many of the Master’s level theses and projects she oversees involve validation of Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) models for aerospace applications as well as optimizing efficiency of thermal-fluid systems (including wind turbine designs). On the engineering education side, her research focuses on the nontraditional engineering student – understanding their motivations, identity development, and impact of prior engineering-related experiences. Her work dwells into learning in informal settings such as summer camps, military experiences, and extra-curricular activities.