Julia Melkers
Arizona State University Campus Immersion, AZ·Education Research
Crises such as economic shocks and security threats have long pushed engineers to invent new technologies and build tougher infrastructure. Less is known about how the university programs that train engineers adapt or transform during crisis.
- Fields
Education Research
Social Science
- Topics
engineering education
higher education policy
crisis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Identify the policy, institutional, structural and cultural factors that enable or block innovation in academic engineering programs during crisis, through comparative case studies in five Research Periphery Countries.
- Collect and code semi-structured interviews and institutional policy and strategy documents, using text analysis software and multiple coders, to compare engineering reforms across countries.
- Develop a typology of crisis-responsive engineering education reforms, organizational and teaching-related, that maps their barriers and opportunities and draws lessons from both successes and failures.
More about the research
This matters most in Research Periphery Countries (RPCs), nations with less-developed research systems. These countries face market volatility, security threats and other disruptions that make it harder for engineering schools to succeed.
Why it matters
Engineering schools in crisis-affected regions, such as those facing war or economic upheaval, must keep training engineers while their surroundings are disrupted. By identifying what helps and hinders reform, this work could give university leaders and policymakers practical guidance for designing more resilient, socially responsive engineering programs.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jennifer Detlor
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Education Research
Identify which factors lead engineering students to self-identify as rural, and how strongly they hold that identity, using a survey in which students define rurality in their own terms.
Daniel Giovenco
Columbia University, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology
Measure how much tobacco retailer density falls under license-capping policies in San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York City, using archival tobacco retail licensing data.
Jennifer Macy
California State University-Dominguez Hills, CA·Social Science
Trace how Nordic incarceration principles such as dignity, normalization and resocialization have been translated into U.S. correctional policy and practice, using archival documents, interviews and observation at several implementation sites.
The school
Arizona State University Campus Immersion: 36 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 625 research doctorates a year.
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