Allison Godwin is the first engineering education hire at Cornell University, joining the faculty in 2023. She graduated from Clemson University with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 2011 and a Ph.D. in Engineering and Science Education in 2014. She joined the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University upon graduation, receiving tenure as well as a joint appointment in the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering in 2020. Her research focuses on four main areas including 1) research on how diverse students in engineering navigate their pathways into and through engineering, with a particular focus on engineering identity development; 2) effective pedagogies and practices for an inclusive engineering education; 3) engineering workforce development; and 4) building capacity for engineering education research, particularly in chemical engineering. Her research earned a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2016 focused on characterizing latent diversity, which includes diverse attitudes, mindsets, and approaches to learning to understand engineering students’ identity development. She is the Past Chair of the American Society for Engineering Education Educational Research (ASEE ERM) and Methods Division (2021-2023) and an Associate Editor for Chemical Engineering Education (2020-Present) and the Journal of Engineering Education (2023-Present). Her research has won numerous best paper awards including the 2023 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Research Award, the 2022 American Educational Research Association Education in the Professions (Division I) 2021-2022 Outstanding Research Publication Award, and the 2021 Chemical Engineering Education William H. Corcoran Award. She is also an award-winning teacher and graduate mentor.
Allison Godwin’s research focuses on changing the culture of engineering through research to make the discipline more inclusive of all types of people from K-12 through higher education and into engineering industry. She investigates how diverse people develop identities as engineers and how their multiple identities—including gender, race/ethnicity, among others—impact their inclusion, recruitment, persistence, and career trajectories. Identity in a particular role, like engineering, emphasizes that how students make sense of what it means to be a professional within their field can reveal information about how they understand who they are in the world, whom they can become, and if they belong.
She conducts mixed methods research, which includes large-scale quantitative studies and “small n” qualitative studies through surveys, interventions, interviews, focus groups, and other data collection techniques. Using both of these data streams provides the ability to understand general trends as well as rich and nuanced findings from individual’s lived experiences.
Professor Godwin has developed and tested effective pedagogies in an introductory chemical engineering course to reduce high failure rates and strengthen students’ motivation. This work has had direct impact on student retention and success rates at Purdue University. She is studying how low-cost, low-effort classroom interventions can address equity gaps in academic performance in first and second-year engineering courses. Professor Godwin has also worked with emerging engineering education scholars to promote engineering education development in methods, publications, and CAREER grant applications.
Engineering requires students to apply fundamental concepts and theories learned not only in their discipline-specific courses but also from other areas. One of Professor Godwin’s key goals for students is that they develop skills in analytical reasoning and transfer of knowledge from familiar contexts to novel problems. She uses evidence-based teaching techniques to support students in this process including active learning, belonging-centered instruction, and others. She has taught large-enrollment first-year engineering courses, materials and energy balances, and graduate courses in engineering education research methods and advanced quantitative methods.
Cornell Engineering celebrated excellence in education at its 2024 Fall Faculty Reception, honoring outstanding faculty members and recognizing their contributions by presenting the college’s annual... Read more about Cornell Engineering celebrates Teaching and Advising Award winners
Engaging with a whole set of mentors will allow the CIDER postdocs to approach questions about student learning and experiences across disciplinary boundaries and use techniques from multiple fields. Read more about NSF-funded postdocs to research education across disciplines
An endowed professorship, made possible with a gift from George Stephen Irwin ’67, M.Eng. ’68, is dedicated to engineering education research. Allison Godwin, associate professor in the Smith School... Read more about Irwin gift endows unique engineering education professorship
