Brown Bag-Dr. Laura Bottomley
Our next Brown Bag seminar will be conducted by Dr. Laura Bottomley, Director of the Women in Engineering and K-12 Outreach in the College of Engineering. Her presentation is entitled K-12 Educational Innovation in Engineering for the 21st Century. The seminar will take place on February 18, 2009 at the Friday Institute on NC State's Centennial Campus in the Collaboratory Commons. Refreshments will be available at 8:30AM and the presentation will begin at 9:00AM.
Dr. Laura Bottomley will introduce us all to the K-12 Outreach programs in the College of Engineering, including the Engineering Place and Women in Engineering. These programs are addressing many of the same concerns and perspectives that many of us at the Friday Institute and the College of Education share, but from the engineering band of the STEM spectrum. She will discuss her college’s outreach programs, and current collaborations and opportunities for the future in 21st Century educational innovation. She will specifically address how the vowel in STEM can be a platform for effectively motivating a diverse population of students in grades K‑12 to learn.
Dr. Bottomley joined NC State University in fall of 1997 with the mission of creating a Women in Engineering program; two years later she originated a K-12 Outreach program in 1999. She is responsible for the oversight of the Engineering Place and its strategic operations, and a frequent creative contributor to program content. She also runs the Women in Engineering program, advises students, and teaches the E101 Introduction to Engineering and Problem-Solving class for first year students.
Under her leadership, the combined Women in Engineering and K-12 Outreach Program received the President’s Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring in 2000. Some of her National Science Foundation-sponsored K-12 work was featured on the NSF Discoveries web site.
Laura Bottomley received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech, and her Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from N.C. State. She has worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and consulted with numerous large engineering organizations such as Lockheed Martin, IBM, MCNC and others.
As always, please feel free to bring colleagues and students to the presentation.