Dr. Eugenia Victoria Ellis, associate professor, carrying a dual appointment with Drexel University College of Engineering and Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, has been elected to become a 2012-2013 ELATE Fellow. Ellis has been elected based on recognition of her work and she will be joining the nation’s leading educators in technology and engineering.
Ellis has more than 25 years of experience designing civic and municipal projects, laboratories for high-tech industry and healthcare/skilled nursing facilities. Her work has been exhibited at numerous galleries and her built projects have been recognized for design by the American Institute of Architects. Ellis' research interests include spatial visualization and three dimensional imagining, visual perception and altered states of perception such as Alzheimer's disease and dementia, natural light and health, (eco)logical strategies for smart, sustainable buildings at the nexus of health, energy and technology. Some of her recent work includes daylight-matching LED luminaires as a design solution that could also be used to help relieve seasonal affective disorder while reducing energy. Ellis currently teaches advanced seminars in theory and interdisciplinary experimental courses in sustainable and smart design at Drexel University.
ELATE at Drexel™, a program of the International Center for Executive Leadership in Academics at Drexel University College of Medicine, is a one-year, part-time program that addresses the need to increase the diversity and leadership capacity of engineering, computer science and related fields within academe. This need is well established - although women receive 21.5 percent of engineering Ph.D.’s awarded in the United States, they account for only five percent of full professor positions and only 11 percent (41 of 379) go on to become engineering department heads (data from NSF and ASEE).
Ellis, along with this inaugural class of Fellows, will embark on a curriculum that will increase personal and professional leadership effectiveness, develop knowledge of organizational dynamics of their colleges and universities, improve strategic management of finances and resources and lay the foundation for a community of exceptional women who will bring organizational perspectives and deep personal capacity to the institutions and society they serve. Facilitated by leaders in the fields of engineering, technology and leadership development, the curriculum utilizes lessons of leadership that move from the classroom into on-the-job application at each Fellow’s home institution.
The work for the 2012-2013 class begins this month with online assignments and community building activities that continue through the end of the program in April 2013. Fellows begin the first of three week-long, in-residence sessions when they meet for the first time at the ACE Conference Center in Lafayette Hill, PA, August 2, 2012.