READING, Pa. — Sadan Kulturel-Konak, professor of management information systems and director of the Flemming Creativity, Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CEED) Center at Penn State Berks, will be formally recognized with the 2024 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Middle Atlantic Section Distinguished Teaching Award at the association’s fall conference at Farmingdale State College, Oct. 25-26.
In addition, Kulturel-Konak will be invited to give a talk related to her teaching experiences at the conference. The title of her lecture is “Reinventing engineering engineering education: student-centered approach.”
Candidates for the Distinguished Teaching Award are evaluated based on three criteria: classroom performance, teaching scholarship contributions, and ASEE participation.
Regarding her classroom performance, one nominator stated, "As an architectural engineering student participating in Dr. Kulturel-Konak's programs over the past two years, I have witnessed her dedication to continuously improving her integrated approach to teaching entrepreneurship and serving students."
Another nominator said: "Dr. Kulturel-Konak’s teaching portfolio reflects her devotion to integrating disciplinary training with transformative educational experiences in entrepreneurship, engineering, business, and information sciences and technology. "
Her teaching scholarship contributions were summarized by another nominator who stated, "While educating students is a driving force for Dr. Kulturel-Konak, she has expanded the reach by offering faculty learning communities to assist them in integrating design thinking into their courses."
Another nominator commended her for including students in her research, stating, "It is highly commendable that Dr. Kulturel-Konak has included more than 65 undergraduates in her research, including in her National Science Foundation-funded projects, providing these students with higher-level critical thinking, analytical and writing skills."
Kulturel-Konak is also an affiliate graduate faculty at the Penn State Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. Her primary research focus is on modeling and optimization of complex systems using exact solution methods and metaheuristic techniques such as Tabu Search, Genetic Algorithms and Ant Colony Approaches. The primary application areas include facility logistics, reliability and network design.
She earned her doctorate in industrial and systems engineering from Auburn University; a master’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s degree in operations research from Middle East Technical University, Turkey; and a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Gazi University, Turkey.
About the ASEE Middle Atlantic Distinguished Teaching Award
Candidates must be members of the ASEE Middle Atlantic Section who teach any subject included in an ABET accredited engineering or engineering technology curriculum, including faculty teaching parallel courses at two-year or community colleges. Those teaching humanities and social studies, mathematics, science, applied science and computing science are also eligible.