Sheryl Sorby Wins ASEE Award for Women in Engineering Education

The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) has honored Sheryl Sorby with its 2011 Sharon Keillor Award for Women in Engineering Education. Sorby is a professor of mechanical engineering at Michigan Technological University. The national award recognizes women who are making outstanding contributions to engineering education. 

"Sheryl has made significant contributions to engineering education through her research on three-dimensional visualization skills," said Michigan Tech College of Engineering Dean Tim Schulz. "I am pleased to see her receive this well-deserved recognition for her outstanding contributions to engineering education."

Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics Chair Bill Predebon also praised Sorby, calling her "an educational innovator, which she has demonstrated through her research and throughout her career at Michigan Tech."

Said Sorby: "I'm very gratified to receive this award and appreciate the efforts of Michigan Tech colleagues, especially Chris Anderson, who helped with the nomination packet. Things have changed for women in engineering since I started down this path--they aren't perfect, but it has gotten better. My two daughters are studying engineering. Hopefully the environment for them is better than it was for me."

Sorby is the director of Tech's Engineering Education Innovation Research Group. She is known for preparing engineering students and middle school students to think like engineers. Her research interests include advanced composite materials for use in civil infrastructure and 3-D computer graphics for visualization of complex behaviors.

She is the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation-funded project to develop a curriculum in service systems engineering at Michigan Tech. This new engineering specialty focuses on people and human behavior, on processes rather than products and on customer interaction with service systems of many kinds--from health care and social services to transportation, hospitality and food services, utilities, financial and insurance services, waste management and security.

Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.