Pauley Earns First-Ever Undergraduate Program Leadership Award

March 20, 2003
University Park, Pa. – Laura L. Pauley, professor-in-charge of undergraduate programs in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, will receive the inaugural Undergraduate Program Leadership Award at the University's Faculty/Staff Recognition Awards Program on March 24 at the Nittany Lion Inn on the University Park campus.

            The award was established to recognize faculty members who have demonstrated exemplary leadership that has transformed or revitalized an existing Penn State undergraduate degree program.

            Pauley, a professor of mechanical engineering, has been on the Penn State faculty since 1988, and has been in charge of her department's undergraduate programs since 2000. When the formerly separate Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Nuclear Engineering merged in 1998, she helped develop a plan of study for students to receive degrees in both of the areas in nine or 10 semesters. This strategy prompted a doubling of the nuclear engineering undergraduate enrollment in just three years.

            Through her organization of an NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates Program over seven years, Pauley brought 90 students from various universities to work in Penn State mechanical engineering laboratories in the summers between their junior and senior years. She also has been involved in such College of Engineering and departmental student organizations as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Women in Engineering Program and the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society.

            Pauley has served on the Faculty Senate for nearly 10 years, including her duties as chair of its Undergraduate Education Committee for the past two years. Last year, she was a driving force in securing reaccreditation for both of her department's undergraduate programs under the new procedures of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology.

**gwc**

Contact: Gary W. Cramer, Penn State Department of Public Information, at
(814) 865-7517 or gwc104@psu.edu