Saterbak elected to ASEE board

Ann Saterbak, professor in the practice of bioengineering education in the Department of Bioengineering, has been elected to the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) board of directors.

The ASEE is a nonprofit group that pursues policies and programs to enhance professional opportunities for engineering faculty members. It promotes activities to increase university engineering enrollment and has 12,000 individual members and 4,000 organizational members from throughout education, government and business.

“I am honored to serve on the Board of Directors for ASEE. Undergraduate education is really my passion and I feel that I can work toward innovation in engineering education at the national level through ASEE,” Saterbak said.

After working as an engineer for Shell, Saterbak joined the Rice faculty in 1999. She has collaborated with other faculty members in broadening bioengineering course offerings and building state-of-the-art undergraduate laboratories. Last year, she implemented a new course for freshman engineering students enrolled in multiple disciplines. Participants work in teams to solve contemporary problems, using engineering evaluation, modeling and design.

“I think that it is important for students to learn early in their education to solve open-ended problems,” she said. “Most of the complex engineering challenges today—from energy to medical applications—require both technical expertise and creativity.”

Saterbak has also led several undergraduate educational initiatives at local and national levels and is Associate Chair for Undergraduate Affairs at Rice. With a National Science Foundation grant, she co-wrote the textbook, Bioengineering Fundamentals, published by Prentice Hall in 2007.

Saterbak earned a B.A. in chemical engineering and biochemistry from Rice in 1990. She was awarded a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995.

Dwight Daniels, Engineering Communications