First-Hand:Carlotta A. Berry
First-Hand: ASEE Fellow History - Berry
History of an ASEE Fellow
Carlotta A. Berry
As of January 18, 2022
Birthplace: Nashville, TN
Birth date: July 4, 1970
Family
I was born in Nashville, TN as the youngest child and only daughter of Dorothy Johnson. My mom was a kindergarten teacher for thirty years and I have always wanted to be a teacher. I can remember holding school with my dolls as well as assigning and grading their homework from a very young age. There were many years that I helped my mom in her classroom through summer breaks and Red Cross. I also taught Sunday school, bible study, and the children’s choir. I have two older brothers; one is a graphic artist and the other does computer aided design. I was introduced to STEM in the 6th grade when I created an electric circuit with a light bulb and battery for a science project. I was encouraged to pursue engineering in high school because of my affinity for math and science. It was in engineering school that I decided to become an engineering educator. This was based upon my desire to change the face of the field to show that it could be more diverse, engaging, exciting, and relevant. This was also when my love for robotics and multidisciplinary applications of it were born.
Education
In order satisfy my passions for teaching and engineering, I entered a dual degree program between Spelman College and Georgia Institute of Technology in 1988. I have a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from Spelman College and a B.E. in electrical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. After graduation, I went to work as an engineer in Michigan and eventually pursued my masters in the evening at Wayne State University. When this proved to be untenable, I took a leave from my full-time employment to complete my master’s in electrical engineering from Wayne State University. My thesis focused on designing a feedback controller that was simulated in MATLAB to adjust the heating on a bending lehr for a windshield factory. After completing my masters, I went back to industry for one year before leaving to pursue my PhD in electrical engineering from Vanderbilt University. I graduated in May 2003 with a dissertation on the design of a human-robot interface to enhance remote control of a mobile robot.
Employment
As an undergraduate student, I worked as an engineering intern for South Central Bell and Ford Motor Company Nashville Glass Plant. In this role I worked in manufacturing facilities to monitor construction and controls projects. I also learned to mark up CAD drawings and program PLCs using ladder logic.
After graduation from Georgia Tech, I went to work as controls engineer at Ford Motor Company Dearborn Glass Plant. In this role, I programmed PLC line logic for the windshield line and the pick and place industrial manipulator. I also worked with the maintenance team to maintain all equipment. After graduation from Wayne State, I moved to Detroit Edison as a controls engineer. I worked on the distributed controls team to install a new system in the Monroe Power Plant.
After graduation from Vanderbilt University, I worked as an assistant professor at Tennessee State University for three years. During that time, I participated in many engineering education workshops, taught courses in design, controls, and controls and supervised a master’s thesis on human-robot interaction. I then moved to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology where I am currently a full professor and the Lawrence Giacoletto Endowed Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering. I am co-director or the Rose Building Undergraduate Diversity Program, co-founder of the multidisciplinary minor in robotics, and advisor for the National Society of Black Engineers.
Research and Scholarship
My research interests focus on several areas including diversifying engineering education, human-robot interaction, and mobile robotics education. My value as a professor is grounded in my personal experiences and my innate ability to make a meaningful connection with my students and colleagues as a leader, mentor, and a role model. The intersectionality of my identity as an African American female engineering professor along with the intersectionality of my service, teaching, and professional development highlight my contributions as a scholar [1-2]. Boyer [3] states that the work of the professoriate may be separated into four separate yet also overlapping functions: scholarship of discovery, scholarship of integration, scholarship of application, and the scholarship of teaching. He proposes that there must be a more inclusive view of scholarship that is a synthesis of research, practice, and teaching. The various types of scholarship interact to form an interdependent whole which is necessary to recognize the diversity of talent in the professoriate. This model most accurately describes my scholarship, which is unique because it is transdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and cross disciplinary. My teaching, service, and professional development focus on robotics education, human-robot interaction, and bringing underrepresented populations to STEM fields. My unique focus means my professional and personal life is a framework to bring people to robotics and STEM, bring robotics and STEM to people, while diversifying STEM fields. I use robotics to teach technical concepts in software and controls and to exhibit connections between multiple disciplines. I use robotics for professional development through independent study projects with students, human-robot collaboration, and internet of things research with colleagues and designing educational controls and robotics models. I also use robotics for service because it enables me to illustrate connections to science, math and engineering while also sharing my personal journey to recruit and educate people from all backgrounds and academic levels to diversify the profession.
My research philosophy is based upon engineering education in that I seek to engage undergraduates in robotics research as a learning experience for myself and them. However, there are some challenges based upon their technical ability and prerequisite knowledge, it typically takes longer to produce a useful product. However, this does not mean that what they do should not be considered a substantive learning experience and professional development for me. There are always results that come out of this interaction that can be built upon for future work to guide me into the next steps in my research vision. My plan has always been to use the output of these independent studies to publish in robotics education.
In this section I will highlight some of my recent work completed with students and colleagues. On project is on human-robot collaboration that has been submitted for the IBM AI XPRIZE competition. The goal of the work with the learning community is to design a system that will use deep learning so that a robot can detect a human’s intent during an interaction and respond accordingly. Last year I also worked on an Internet of Things projects where a multidisciplinary team of students mounted Shimmer sensors on equipment in the Student Recreation Center to extract meaningful data that could be used to determine the type of activity. Last year I worked with a master’s student to design an educational robot platform that could be programmed using various interfaces and languages. I am also currently working with an undergraduate mechanical engineering student who built a robot which can be run with various controllers to create a platform with the flexibility to be programmed in a variety of languages to reduce the learning curve for students with divergent prerequisite skills. I also work with students to extend my PhD thesis work on a Pioneer P3DX robot by creating an intuitive interface to display sensor data in a 3D format to reduce mental workload and increase situational awareness.
Due to the nature of my research, it is typically published in education conferences such as FIE or ASEE and in education journals such as Computers in Education and Journal of STEM. External validation of my work also comes from my speaking engagements, podcasts, radio interviews, magazine articles, and news media. In the future, I would like to continue to engage K-12 and undergraduate students in robotics education and research projects because I feel that this is an integral part of their education process and my professional development.
Philosophy of Engineering Education
My teaching philosophy has evolved over the years based upon my many life experiences from student to engineer to professor. I view learning and the education process as a journey where the detours prove to be just as invaluable as the destination. I take my students on the adventure with me because we all must share in the learning experience to arrive at a really great place. I seek to inject my personality and unique perspective into the experience to make learning fun, exciting, valuable, and relevant. Although I am a mentor, guide, and facilitator, I want the students to also view themselves as an educator because I am not the only source of knowledge. I expect for us to learn from each other while also being challenged. I also emphasize that forward progress is only possible when everyone is engaged and takes personal responsibility. I know that I have achieved my purpose when students not only master the material but have an appreciation for it and the process.
My inspirations for my chosen career path were my mother and grandmother who were both teachers for over 30 years. From an early age, I absolutely loved going to school and learning. Even as a child I wanted to be a teacher and I can recall holding class with my dolls and assigning and then grading their homework. In high school, I would spend all my breaks helping my mother in her kindergarten classroom. This experience gave me my nurturing and patient attitude towards teaching. This was the same period when I decided to change my career path from math teacher to engineer. In college, I enrolled in a dual degree program between Spelman College and Georgia Institute of Technology. In this program, I would earn a Bachelor of Science in math and engineering in 5 years. At Spelman, I was in the living and learning honors program and this experience helped me develop the framework of learning as a holistic process. I think this model is vital for students to achieve higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. At Georgia Tech, I decided to merge my two loves and become an engineering professor. My reasoning was that I felt that I as an engineering professor, I could improve upon the perception of engineering and engineers to students by injecting my diverse perspective.
After Georgia Tech, I took a job as controls engineer for Ford Motor Company. For the first time in my life, I was in a position where I was no longer a mentor, tutor, role model or student. While working nights at Ford Motor Company, I enrolled in Wayne State University MS program in ECE with an emphasis on controls. I believe my time at Wayne State taught helped me the importance of balance, time management, organization, and study skills in the education process. After completing my master’s degree, I became a power plant engineer for Detroit Edison. Although I really enjoyed this job and learned a lot, I knew that I was not living in my true purpose. After one year, I resigned from Detroit Edison and enrolled in the PhD program at Vanderbilt University. At Vanderbilt, I began to walk out my destiny by choosing to be a teaching assistant as well as a research assistant. During my time at Vanderbilt, I also attended several teaching workshops to perfect my craft.
I primarily teach courses related to circuits, controls, robotics, and design. One aspect of my courses that is a big hit with the students are the study guide and partial lecture notes that I provide. These teaching artifacts allow the students to remain focused and on schedule and they include components to satisfy the global, sequential, active, and reflective learners. This is because the study guide has a concept map, learning activities, reflective questions, and key objectives for each lecture. There are also review questions and directions to other resources such as pages to read in the textbook. I also put extensive materials including old exams, quizzes, homework, lab assignments and practicals on the Learning Management System, my website and YouTube to help students strengthen their theoretical foundation and study for exams. I have also taught mathematics, electric circuits, and circuits lab online which required me to create even move innovative techniques to connect with distance learners.
In conclusion, I teach because it is my destiny, life’s mission, as well as my passion. I was a teacher before I had the title. I chose to pursue my PhD because I wanted to be an engineering professor, so that I could change the face of the profession and show a different perspective of engineering. I wanted to show that an engineering professor could be warm, friendly, engaged, encouraging, accessible, and invested in each student’s personal success. It is important for students to see that all engineers are not all cut from the same mold. I seek to make my classroom environment like an experience that the students have never had before and one that they will not easily forget. As is evident from my life experiences, this is one calling on my life that I cannot escape.
ASEE Activities
I attended my first ASEE conference in Nashville, TN in 2003, the year after I graduated from Vanderbilt. I was excited about learning everything about engineering education and how I could become a better educator.
I served as the editor for the Computers in Education Journal and associated editor for the Advances in Engineering Education Journal for several years. I have also served on several panels including Frontiers in Education experiences of African American women faculty in engineering, ASEE CDEI webinar on developing and inspiring mentors and role models, Black In Engineering social justice movement and a video series on the NSF merit review process. I have also served on the ASEE Dupont Minorities in Engineering and FIE New Faculty Fellow Award Committees.
I have also published papers in the Computers in Education, Minorities in Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Women in Engineering divisions. My papers have been nominated for best paper and presentation in the MIND, CoED, Emerging Trends, and Multidisciplinary divisions.
Other Professional Activities
In addition to my membership and service to ASEE I also engage in several other professional organizations. I have served as an advisor and mentor for the National Society of Black Engineers for several years. I am co-founder of Black In Engineering and Black In Robotics. I am also a member of the Academic Research and Leadership Network and organized the Academic Research and Leadership Symposium.
I have served as a subject matter expert and on the faculty advisory board for McGraw Hill Education, Pearson Education and GEX, Inc. I have made several presentations on robotics research and education for IEEE including serving on the organizing and programming committee for the Human-Robot Interaction conference. I also served as a co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Human-Robot Interaction on HRI education.
As part of my work in engineering education and STEM diversity I have received the following awards.
2021 ASEE Commission on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Constituent DEI Award – Black In Engineering
2021 ASEE Fellow Class
2021 TechPoint MIRA Award, TechPoint Foundation For Youth Bridge Builder Award
2020 FIRST Indiana Robotics Game Changer Award
2020 30 Women in Robotics You Need To Know About – Ada Lovelace Day - robohub.org
2020 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Best Paper in Multidisciplinary Division
2020 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Service Award in Computers in Education Division
2020 Reinvented Magazine Interview of the Year Award, On Purpose and Passion
2018 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Best Paper Award in Computers in Education Division
2018 Women and Hi Tech Leading Light Award, You Inspire Me
2016 Inspiring Women in STEM – Insight into Diversity
2014 FIRST Robotics Competition Crossroads Regional Volunteer of the Year
2011 Rose-Hulman Martin Luther King Leadership Award
2010 Women and Hi Tech Leading Light Award Nominee
