Northwestern Center for Engineering Education Research

The Northwestern Center for Engineering Education Research (NCEER) is the umbrella organization for engineering education research at Northwestern University. NCEER's mission is to spark engineering education within Northwestern and beyond.

Rob Linsenmeier and Ann McKenna, now the chair of the College of Technology and Innovation at Arizona State, launched NCEER in 2007. The goal was to provide a common home for the many independent engineering education research efforts at Northwestern, and in particular to help sustain these activities after the conclusion of the VaNTH Engineering Research Center (ERC).

Engineering education research requires the unusual combination of actively engaged engineering faculty and learning science methods, including quasi-experimental design and qualitative and quantitative methods. NCEER is building a community of interdisciplinary experts whose research aims to reform engineering education and is promoting awareness of this work within Northwestern Engineering.

The Center makes connections among many partners, provides guidance and support for research projects, facilitates collaborations with faculty, and draws its scholars from several centers, institutes, orgainzations, and NSF-funded projects, all of which have major branches at Northwestern. NCEER serves as a hub for disseminating research and forging relationships within the engineering school, across schools at Northwestern, and with other universities that have similar aims.

Learn more about our partners by visiting their websites: