Dr. Karl A. Smith

Dr. Karl Smith is Cooperative Learning Professor in the School of Engineering Education within the College of Engineering at Purdue University. In addition, he is the Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor and Executive Co-Director of the STEM Education Center, Technological Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota.

Smith earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Michigan Tech and a PhD from the University of Minnesota.

With more than 30 years of experience working with faculty to redesign their courses and programs to enhance student learning, Smith adapted the cooperative learning model to engineering education. In the past 15 years he has focused on high-performance teamwork through his workshops and 2014 book, “Teamwork and Project Management.”

Through those workshops, Smith has helped thousands of faculty build knowledge, skills and confidence for involving their student in more active, interactive and cooperative learning both during class time and outside of class.

Smith's research and development interests include building research and innovation capabilities in engineering education; faculty and graduate student professional development; the role of cooperation in learning and design; problem formulation, modeling, and knowledge engineering and project and knowledge management. 

He has written eight books and published many articles on teamwork, cooperative learning and structured controversy, engineering education and knowledge representation and expert systems. 

Dr. Smith was inducted into Michigan Technological University's newly formed Academy of Engineering Education Leadership in September 2018.