10/13/2009
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Engineering faculty members in the first half of their careers who are developing and implementing innovative educational approaches in a variety of disciplines will come together for the 2-1/2-day event, where they can share ideas, learn from research and best practice in education, and leave with a charter to bring about improvement in their home institution.
"The Frontiers of Engineering Education program will create a unique venue for engineering faculty members to share and explore interesting and effective innovations in teaching and learning,” said NAE President Charles M. Vest. “We intend for FOEE to become a major force in identifying, recognizing, and promulgating advances and innovations in order to build a strong intellectual infrastructure and commitment to 21st-century engineering education.”
The symposium, to be held Nov. 15-18 in Herndon, Va., will focus on effective ways to ensure that students learn the engineering fundamentals, the expanding knowledge base of new technology, and the skills necessary to be an effective engineer or engineering researcher.
“In our increasingly global and competitive world, the United States needs to marshal its resources to address the strategic shortfall of engineering leaders in the next decades,” said Edward F. Crawley, Ford Professor of Engineering at MIT, and chairman of the first FOEE. “By holding this event, we have recognized some of the finest young engineering educators in the nation, and will better equip them to transform the educational process at their universities.”
The participants were nominated by fellow engineers or deans and chosen from a highly competitive pool of applicants.
Werth has been on the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Illinois since 1997. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in hazardous waste site assessment, remediation and management, environmental transport modeling, sustainable urban engineering, and drinking water treatment processes.
His research focuses on the transport and fate of organic chemicals in the environment, and on the development of sustainable technologies for pollution abatement. Specific areas of interest include the study of reactive transport mechanisms of pollutants in porous media (with an emphasis on partitioning and mass transfer), development of catalytic reduction technologies for oxyanions and halogenated organics, and the fate of legacy/emerging pollutants in natural systems and engineered watersheds.
Werth is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors. He has received a number of awards, including the National Science Foundation's CAREER Award, the Arthur and Virginia Nauman Faculty Scholar Award, the Humbolt Research Fellow Award, and the BP Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Instruction.