Carolyn Seepersad is presented with the Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award by (left to right) Board of Regents Chair Colleen McHugh, Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa, M.D., and Regent Robert Stillwell.
Dr. Carolyn Seepersad has been honored with the 2010 Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award, awarded by The University of Texas Systems' Board of Regents. This award is given in recognition of those who serve The University of Texas Systems' undergraduate students in an exemplary manner. Dr. Seepersad is one of 17 tenure-track faculty in The University of Texas System to win this award.
The Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award
This is a teaching award presented annually to outstanding faculty members (tenured, tenure-track and non-tenure-track)who have made significant educational contributions to the university, both in the classroom and beyond through creative innovation and methodology in education. It is one of the highest honors bestowed by The University of Texas System for educational excellence. The award is "a symbol of the importance [the regents] place on the provision of undergraduate teaching and learning of the highest order." Dr. Seepersad was recommended by Dr. Gerald E. Speitel Jr., Dean for Academic Affairs of the Cockrell School of Engineering, Chair Joe Beaman of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Dr. Kathy Schmidt, former director of the Faculty Innovation Center, two current faculty members and eleven former students.
"As an educator, my mission is to make mechanical engineering as exciting for the students as it is for me. I strive to build intellectual excitement by engaging students' minds via their senses, not only their physical senses but also their sense of purpose. Hands-on activities and projects, reflective writing exercises and integration of research into the classroom have all been useful techniques for challenging students and encouraging them to surpass their own expectations for the course."
-Dr. Carolyn Seepersad
Carolyn Seepersad's Credentials
Professor Seepersad is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. She received a "B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University in 1996 and a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 1998. She received her Masters and Ph.D. degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology before joining The University of Texas at Austin in 2005. While at Georgia Tech, she held a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Hertz Graduate Fellowship, winning a Sigma Xi Outstanding Dissertation Award. Among her numerous awards is a Rhodes Scholarship, class of 1996. In 2006, Seepersad won a Student Engineering Council Faculty Appreciation Award. In 2010, Dr. Carolyn Seepersad was awarded both the Dean's Award for Outstanding Teaching by an Assistant Professor and The University of Texas System Board of Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award.
Professor Seepersad has also won numerous research awards including the 2010 Young Investigator Award from the ASME Design Automation Committee, the 2009 International Outstanding Young Researcher in Freeform and Additive Manufacturing, Best Paper Awards from the ASME IDETC Design Theory and Methodology Conference (2009) and the ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition (2010).
Dr. Seepersad responds to students' questions in her Design of Complex Energy Systems class(ME 397).
Research, Mentoring and Teaching
Dr. Seepersad became an assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering department in the spring 2005, and now teaches ME 397/379 Solid Freeform Fabrication, which she defines as "the use of additive manufacturing processes for producing parts directly from computer models, without part-specific tooling" She also teaches ME 397, the Design of Complex Engineering Systems, and ME 366J, Mechanical Design Methodology. In addition to her classroom teaching duties, she has been actively involved in a number of educational and mentoring initiatives, including the school chapter of Tau Beta Pi (the engineering honor society), and interviewing the finalists of the Rhodes and Hertz scholarships, two scholarships she received herself. She regularly participates in the community outreach events, Explore UT (the university open house) and WE@UT,an event sponsored by the Women in Engineering Program.
Since her arrival in 2005, she has supervised seven graduate students and advised 19 undergraduate researchers, including three Plan II honors theses, one of whom earned a George H. Mitchell Award for Excellence in Graduate Research and became a peer-reviewed conference publication.
In addition to teaching, she is an accomplished researcher focused in the areas of Engineering Design and Additive Manufacturing. She is the PI (principal investigator) or co-PI on $1.2M of research funding from a variety of agencies, including government agencies, national laboratories and private industry. In 2009 she was named the International Outstanding Young Researcher in Freeform and Additive Manufacturing and received the Best Paper Award at the 2009 Design Theory and Methodology Conference of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers).
