Cassie Wallwey, Ph.D.

Research Statement

Engineering culture is steeped in the tradition of being exclusive by ‘weeding-out’ students it deems not good enough. My research is driven by the belief that students should be the only ones to determine if engineering is for them. My research areas focus on engineering student success and inclusive environments and practices in engineering classrooms, but my research interest and aspirations move beyond classrooms to engineering culture and community.

To begin to break down the exclusive nature of engineering, the beliefs and culture of this community must be understood at a deep level to better effect meaningful and lasting change. Engineering’s ‘weed-out’ practices and exclusionary culture can be studied, evaluated, and ultimately changed at many points in the engineering pipeline.

Biography

Cassie Wallwey, Ph.D. is a Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. Her research interests include studying effective feedback in engineering and mathematics courses, improving engineering student motivation and success, and understanding exclusion in engineering to help confront its weed-out culture.

Cassie has her Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Ohio State University, where she worked as a Graduate Research Assistant and Graduate Teaching Associate, primarily teaching first-year engineering and engineering mathematics. She also has both a B.S. and M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Wright State, where she also worked as a Graduate Teaching Associate for an engineering mathematics course.

Selected Publications

Wallwey, C., & Milburn, T., & Morin, B. (2021, July), Scaffolding Technical Writing Within a First-Year Engineering Lab Experience [Paper & Presentation] 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. https://strategy.asee.org/37696

Clark, A.M., Desing, R., Wallwey, C.J., Kajfez, R. L., Mohammadi-Aragh, M. J., & Sassi, S. (2020). Tracking first-year engineering students’ identity metrics. International Journal of Engineering Education, 36(5), 1625-1639.

Wallwey, C., & Kajfez, R. L. (2020, June), Exploring Literature on How Instructor Feedback Impacts STEM Student Motivation [Paper & Presentation] 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Online. 10.18260/1-2—3464

Kramer, A., Wallwey, C., Thanh, G., Dringenberg, E. A., & Kajfez, R. (2019) A Narrative-Style Exploration of Undergraduate Engineering Students' Beliefs about Smartness and Identity [Paper & Presentation]. In Frontiers in Education Annual Conference. IEEE.

American Society for Engineering Education