Faculty receive Celebration of Education Awards

Four College of Engineering faculty members will be honored at the upcoming Celebration of Education Awards on April 30: Jonathan Cagan, Rosemary Frollini, Diana Marculescu, and Baruch Fischhoff.

Jonathan Cagan

Robert E. Doherty Award recipient

Mechanical Engineering Professor and Associate Dean Jonathan Cagan will receive the Doherty Award, which recognizes substantial and sustained contributions to excellence in education.

Cagan has enriched Carnegie Mellon in many ways, including by teaching students how to innovate. His work aligns with the values of the Doherty Award: nurturing students’ and faculty members’ educational potential and bridging the university with outside communities.

In his collaboration with former Professor Craig Vogel, Cagan established the Integrated Product Development capstone course and co-wrote Creating Breakthrough Products. Cagan has crafted courses and materials that teach innovation as actionable and repeatable. He also developed courses focusing on solving societal challenges.

His research collaborations involving the psychology of design have shaped his teaching, resulting in a course on emotion-based product research and a method to formalize a product’s value proposition. Outside of CMU, his industry classic Creating Breakthrough Products still affects how companies nurture and coordinate individuals’ strengths in teams.

Cagan has received numerous awards from CMU and engineering societies, such as the Philip L. Dowd Fellowship Award and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Design Theory and Methodology Award.

Rosemary Frollini

Mark Gelfand Award for Educational Outreach recipient

Rosemary Frollini’s work exemplifies the principles of the Gelfand Award by challenging students to apply their learning to meaningfully improve life in a community. She first joined Chemical Engineering as a faculty member in 1977. Over the years, Frollini has developed curricula and participated in numerous STEM outreach programs.

For undergraduates, Frollini developed laboratory curriculum inspired by graduate courses in Colloids, Polymers, and Surfaces. Frollini set up ChemE’s graduate student Outreach Committee, through which she trained students to demonstrate scientific concepts to the public. She also created forensic activities for K-12 students to spark and sustain their interest in STEM. Events like the Society of Women Engineers High School day and the Carnegie Science Click Program use the forensic materials she created.

Frollini has participated in and created content for many STEM outreach programs. At CMU, she has served on the CIT STEM Outreach Committee and has participated in such programs as the Engineering Research Accelerator Summer Engineering Experience.

Diana Marculescu

Barbara Lazarus Award recipient

Barbara Lazarus advocated for graduate students and young faculty, a quality that Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Diana Marculescu boldly displays. She has advised and mentored 61 graduate students. Through mentoring, she hopes to empower her mentees to define their path as professionals and researchers.

Marculescu, as the Founding Director of the College of Engineering’s Center for Faculty Success, also supports junior faculty. The center organizes events from orientations to mixers to workshops. Notable among the events is the Bias Buster series. These sessions focus on raising awareness of and reducing unconscious bias to create a diverse and inclusive community among faculty, staff, and students.

The idea for creating the center arose out of a retreat Marculescu attended in 2014. The faculty who participated in the CIT Women Faculty Retreat agreed on the structure of the center, in that it should provide support to all faculty. Through collaboration, the center gained endorsement by the College and has since developed to provide faculty resources.

Baruch Fischhoff

William H. and Frances S. Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching recipient

Engineering and Public Policy Professor Baruch Fischhoff has challenged students to combine their natural modes of thought with scientific perspectives, reflecting the devotion to teaching the Ryan Award espouses. The perspectives vary from the analytical to the empirical. Fischhoff facilitates students’ communication of their ideas through discussion and writing.

With his graduate and post-doctoral mentees, Fischhoff helps to translate their ideas into workable research projects and programs. He invests himself earnestly in students’ work. Whether applying his wide knowledge of subjects or collaborating with faculty, he considers how best he can work for his students.