Perspectives on Educating Engineers

Dr. Steven McLaughlin is the 2019 ECE Distinguished Educator Award Winner. 

What are the strategic directions for engineering education?  How are we shifting from skillset to mindsets and shaping our students to become even more impactful leaders, while valuing the rigor of a focused engineering degree?  And what challenges are we seeing  in the student of today, where faculty may be the key to tackling the epidemic of student stress mental health.

Bio

Steven W. McLaughlin received the B.S.E.E. degree from Northwestern University, the M.S.E. degree from Princeton University, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan. He joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech in September 1996, where he is now Dean of the College of Engineering. His research interests are in the general area of communications and information theory. His research group has published in the areas of forward error correction and equalization in wireless communications, data security and privacy, and magnetic/optical data storage. He was awarded the honor Chevalier dans l`Ordre Nationale de Merite, (Knight of the French National Order of Merit), the second highest civilian award given by Republic of France. He was the first Georgia Tech recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). He is a past President of the IEEE Information Theory Society and is a Fellow of the IEEE.  In 2014 he co-founded CREATE-X, a campus-wide effort to instill entrepreneurial confidence in students and help them launch companies. In its first five years the program has successfully launched 160 student-led companies and engaged 3000+ Georgia Tech students in the principles and practice of evidence-based entrepreneurship.