Lisa R. Lattuca

Specifically, Dr. Lattuca has published research on how faculty understand and pursue interdisciplinary research and teaching, the structure and impact of interdisciplinary educational experiences and academic programs on undergraduate learning, the development of engineers’ interdisciplinary and comprehensive systems thinking competencies, how curriculum and instructional practices shape understandings of engineering as a practice, and the role of sociotechnical and equitable teaching and learning experiences in undergraduate engineering programs. Several recent research projects were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).  Currently, she is working with colleagues in the College of Engineering at Michigan on The Nature of Engineering Work: Curricular Messaging and Alignment with Diverse Undergraduate Students’ Values, Interests, and Engineering Intentions. This multi-method study is using course observations, student surveys, and student interviews to examine the curricular messages that engineering students in mechanical and industrial engineering receive from required courses and how these influence their images of these fields and intentions to continue in them during and after college. 

Dr. Lattuca was also Co-PI for a Broadening Participation in Engineering grant entitled Creating an Engineering Equity Teaching Center, where she collaborated with U-M engineering faculty and professional staff in the Center for Socially Engaged Engineering Education and Design and the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching in Engineering. She led the project component that developed a curricular and instructional framework for equitable engineering education to assist engineering faculty in creating courses and programs that integrate sociotechnical and equity content into engineering courses. In another recent NSF-funded project, Defining and Assessing Systems Thinking in Diverse Engineering Populations, she and her collaborators studied systems thinking processes of practicing engineers and engineering students to understand the influences on these processes and the ways in which participants framed engineering “system” and the implications for engineering solutions. 

Early in her career, Dr. Lattuca was also Co-PI for two NSF-funded studies that benchmarked undergraduate engineering programs’ buy-in to curricular and instructional reforms advocated in the National Academy of Engineering’s “Engineer of 2020” reports. These studies, conducted with colleagues from Penn State’s Colleges of Education and Engineering, examined how educational and organizational practices affected students’ design and problem-solving skills, interdisciplinary competence, and contextual competence. These studies built on her work as Project Director and Co-PI of a national study that investigated the impact of the implementation of outcomes-based accreditation criteria on engineering programs and student learning. Her research has also been funded by the Helmsley Foundation and ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology). 

In addition to journal articles and book chapters on these topics, Dr. Lattuca is the co-author of Shaping the College Curriculum: Academic Plans in Context (with Joan Stark); and author of Creating Interdisciplinarity: Interdisciplinary Teaching and Research among College and University Faculty. She has served as senior associate editor of the Journal of Engineering Education and has served or is currently serving on the editorial boards of The Journal of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, Higher Education, American Journal of Education, The Journal of General Education, and AERA Open.

Dr. Lattuca earned her PhD from the University of Michigan, a master’s from Cornell University, and a bachelor’s degree from Saint Peter’s University. She previously held faculty positions at Penn State (University Park) and Loyola University Chicago. Before moving to Penn State, she was a program officer at the Spencer Foundation. Her administrative experiences in higher education include work as assistant dean for enrollment management, director of marketing, and assistant director of communications.