Keynote Speakers
Rebecca Komarek
Wednesday, May 14, at 5:15 PM
Rebecca Komarek is an experienced instructor and administrator with a focus in engineering education. She has taught in the areas of engineering design, engineering leadership development, professional skill development and higher education research. She earned her PhD from the University of Colorado Boulder in civil engineering with a research focus of leadership development in engineering education and is actively involved in the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). She was a founding member of the leadership team at the Idea Forge design and prototyping facility at CU Boulder and ran the university startup accelerator, Catalyze CU. She earned her B.S. and M.S. in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her M.S. in higher education administration from Northwestern University. She spent numerous years working as a forensic structural engineer in Chicago. Rebecca is an avid volleyball player and enjoys being outdoors and spending time with her family.
Doug Melton
Thursday, May 15, at 9:00 AM
Biography: Dr. Douglas E. Melton is Program Director at the Kern Family Foundation, where he leads national efforts to transform engineering education through the cultivation of an entrepreneurial mindset. A former engineering professor with industry experience in signal processing and sound control, Doug now works alongside faculty at more than 70 engineering colleges in the KEEN network to rethink how we prepare students—not just with technical skills, but with the mindset and character to navigate and shape a rapidly changing world.
William Kuskin
Thursday, May 15, at 12:00 Noon
Death and the Printers: Looking to the Past for the Future of Higher Education
Biography: Dr. Kuskin served in the Office of the Provost from 2014-2019, ultimately as Vice Provost for Academic Innovation. In that role he created the Office of Academic Innovation and the Office of Global Engagement. Prior to that, he was Chair of the Department of English.
Dr. Kuskin has over two decades experience in digital education. He has taught in all digital formats from distance education, through online courses, to massive open online courses. In 2013 he launched the MOOC, “Comic Books and Graphic Novels,” which ultimately served over seventy-thousand students and which received special mention by Coursera for its innovative delivery of humanities material. In 2016 he created a MOOC on Public Speaking, and in 2019 oversaw the launch of the University of Colorado Boulder’s revolutionary MS in Electrical Engineering on the Coursera platform.
A tenured, full professor, Dr. Kuskin’s research area is the history of the book. He has written and edited books and articles on William Caxton, the emergence of printing in the fifteenth century, the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity, comic books, and online pedagogy. He contributes to Inside Higher Education and writes an occasional blog on motorcycling. His work in the classroom has garnered awards from both the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg.
Dr. Kuskin majored in English and Psychology at Vassar College (class of ’87) and received his MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (’97). He was a University of Warwick Exchange Fellow in 1995, a Stanford Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow in 2000, and a 2006 NEH research grant awardee.
Kathryn Johnson
Friday, May 16, at 9:00 AM
Kathryn Johnson is a Professor at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) in the Department of Electrical Engineering. She received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Clarkson University and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado. She then completed a postdoctoral research assignment at NREL before joining CSM as the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor. Dr. Johnson conducts research in two areas: sociotechnical thinking in engineering education and research and control of wind and hybrid energy systems. She integrates her research areas to help students understand the sociotechnical nature of engineering practice in her own technical field (control systems) as well as other electrical and mechanical engineering specialties via collaborations with colleagues at multiple universities. In Fall 2021, she enjoyed a position as the Fulbright Canada Research Chair in STEM Education at the University of Calgary, Canada. She has served in the leadership group for the ASEE Rocky Mountain Section since 2022 in the roles of Vice Chair, Chair, and Past Chair.