Congratulations to Professor Renata Konrad of the Foisie Business School who was chosen recently as the 20th recipient of the Romeo L. Moruzzi Award for Innnovation in Undergraduate Education.
Professor Konrad was cited for her for her embodiment of WPI’s tradition of theory and practice in the Industrial Engineering curriculum. Over a five year period, Professor Konrad worked to integrate and improve an ambitious, real-world project with industry partners in an undergraduate course on simulation modeling and analysis. The full citation can be viewed here.
Noticing that the project approach is unique in Industrial Engineering education, Prof. Konrad is publishing a peer-reviewed article on “Effectively Engaging Industry Partners within the Classroom” in INFORMS Transactions on Education (forthcoming, 2018). In her award statement she wrote that if selected as the recipient, she hoped to use the funds to attend the American Society for Engineering Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration and hire programmers to develop test data beds which can be used in other industrial engineering courses to better prepare students for the data management aspects of the project.
This award has been conferred annually since 1999, in honor and remembrance of Romeo L. Moruzzi, a WPI faculty member for close to 40 years who was a key player in bringing tenure to WPI and revolutionizing undergraduate education with the creation of the WPI Plan.
The Moruzzi Award process is coordinated by the Morgan Teaching and Learning Center, and the winner is chosen by the Educational Development Council, a committee of four faculty members and one undergraduate student.