Use the entrepreneurial mindset to align your personal and professional goals while gaining a supportive community!

When: June 3 - 6, 2024
Where: Minneapolis, MN

Design Your Academic Life (DYAL) helps academics like you assess and align your personal and professional lives. Explore different ways of prototyping your desired future(s), set purposeful steps toward your goals, and identify your support network as you develop your action plans.

Join us to make better connections, be curious in ways that make the most impact, and create value where it matters most!

Who Should Attend: Faculty, academic professionals or others working in academia, especially those who are in a transition period in their career (e.g., applying for tenure, considering a move to administration).

Registration closes April 5.
Registration Closed

3 Key Takeaways:

Everything you learn from the facilitation and coaching team and other participants can be immediately applied to your context and topics of interest.

  • Creating value: Identify personal and professional values to guide future actions.

  • Curiosity: Explore different ways of prototyping your desired future(s).

  • Connections: Reflect on how/if your personal and professional values align with everyday activities.

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Workshop Phases

Each EUFD National workshop consists of three distinct phases, the Quickstart, Meetup, and Press Onward, over the course of a year.

  • 1. QuickStart

    The QuickStart course begins your adventure. You can start your journey immediately after registering. In this self-paced online course, you will begin learning the central ideas of the workshop and how they apply the entrepreneurial mindset (EM). The facilitation team has customized your introduction to the workshops topics and will ask you to identify a candidate project.

  • 2. Meetup

    Within the Meetup course and event, you will interact (and likely even have some fun) with the facilitation team and other participants. The Meetup for this particular workshop will be in-person! Up to thirty participants will meet in Minneapolis, MN from June 3 - 6, 2024. Learning from each other is always one of the most valuable and memorable parts of any workshop sequence. Individual participants will arrive — and a community will emerge.

  • 3. Press Onward

    Pressing Onward can be transformative. Following the Meetup event you will have a series of online meetings over the course of the year with members of the coaching team, individually or with other participants. The ample time between meetings affords an opportunity to develop your ideas and experiment. Get real results as you apply what you learned and share discoveries along the way. When complete, you'll publish a card on EngineeringUnleashed.com to serve as a resource for the community.

Facilitators and Coaches

Facilitator & Coach

Elise Barrella

Elise Barrella, PhD, PE, is the founder and CEO (Chief Everything Officer) of DfX Consulting LLC which offers engineering education and transportation research, planning and consulting services. She is passionate about curriculum development, engaged scholarship, sustainability, and engineering design. Elise was a Founding Faculty member of the Department of Engineering at Wake Forest University, and prior to that led the junior capstone design sequence at James Madison University. She has been involved with KEEN since 2016, leading workshops at the annual conference, conducting EML research, and most recently facilitating and coaching the first two cohorts of Design Your Academic Life (DYAL). In addition to academic pursuits, Elise enjoys local non-profit work with Community Design Studio of NC, Creative Corridors Coalition, and Boston-Thurmond Community Engagement Roundtable.

Facilitator & Coach

Mary Raber

Mary Raber, PhD is a Professor of Practice and Department Chair of the Engineering Fundamentals department at Michigan Tech University, where she works with an amazing team of faculty and staff who support and teach over 1000 first-year engineering students each year. Her research interests include engineering identity development and engineering career readiness. She has been actively engaged with KEEN since 2016 when she was invited to attend her first KEEN Annual Conference. She is a co-creator, facilitator, and coach for Design Your Academic Life.

Facilitator & Coach

Kaitlin Mallouk

Kaitlin is an Associate Professor of Experiential Engineering Education and the Provost's Fellow for Faculty Development at Rowan University. She has been involved in KEEN since 2018 and was the 2023 National Rising Star. She is a co-creator of Design Your Academic Life and has served as a facilitator since its first offering.

Facilitator

Cory Hixson

Cory has a B.S. in Engineering Science (Penn State), M.S. in Industrial & Systems Engineering (Virginia Tech) and Ph.D. in Engineering Education (Virginia Tech). He has experience as an audio-video engineer and educator. Cory currently serves students as the lead faculty member for Colorado Christian University's Engineering program. In this role, Cory develops integrated courses and curricula merging engineering knowledge, skills, and abilities; research-based instructional strategies; and a biblical perspective to engineering education. Importantly, he has successfully fostered university-industry (U-I) partnerships and entrepreneurial-minded learning (EML), which are essential to the CCU Engineering program. U-I partnerships and EML extend the impact of CCU's program beyond classroom learning and provide students with the real-world knowledge and experiences needed to excel after graduation. In addition to working with undergraduate students, Cory is passionate about helping faculty align their personal and professional values and activities.

Coach

Adrienne Minerick

Adrienne R. Minerick is Director and PI of ADVANCE at Michigan Tech leading both an Adaptation grant and Tech’s portion of a Partnership Grant. She is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Michigan Technological University. She earned her B.S. from Michigan Tech and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. Adrienne is a fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), former President of the AES Electrophoresis Society, and a Michigan Professor of the Year Nominee, which illustrate her dual passion for research and education’s impact on individuals and societal advances. She directs the Micro Medical Device Engineering Research Laboratory (M.D. – ERL) at Michigan Tech and was Chief Technology Officer of a start-up company Microdevice Engineering, Inc (MDE). She has managed, as PI or co-PI, 47 grants/contracts for a total of $11 million yielding 93 research graduates*, a patent, and 101 publications/book chapters [*12 PhDs (64% women, 18%URM), 3 MS, 79 undergraduates; overall 56% women and 22% underrepresented]. Adrienne has served in administrative roles including Associate Dean for Research and Innovation in the College of Engineering, Assistant to the Provost for Faculty Development, Dean of the School of Technology, founding Dean of the College of Computing, Interim Dean of the Pavlis Honors College.

Coach

Jennifer Monahan

Jennifer Monahan has been teaching chemistry at Saint Louis University since 2008. Trained as an analytical chemist she is drawn to science that bridges disciplines. Jennifer considers herself lucky to have studied under chemists, biologists, and engineers at the University of Illinois, Purdue University, and the University of Virginia. As a mentor, Jennifer strives to help students identify & solidify foundational skills that can serve as a jumping-off-point when applying an Entrepreneurial Mindset to broader scientific problems. In 2021, Professor Monahan received Saint Louis University’s William V. Stauder, S.J. Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in the Natural Sciences. In 2023 she was honored to be named an Engineering Unleashed Fellow. Inspired by the 2022 KEEN DYAL Workshop, Jennifer is currently running a monthly mentoring program focused on professional development and interdepartmental networking for non-tenure track faculty.

Transform your teaching, research, or service.

Engineering Unleashed Faculty Development Workshops deliver actionable, adaptable strategies and resources that empower you to create long-lasting value with the entrepreneurial mindset (EM). Expert faculty from top institutions have created these workshops that provide guidance to complete a project while collaborating with faculty from across the nation.