Kirsten Davis, PhD

Member profile:

I served as teaching assistant for the Rising Sophomore Abroad Program (RSAP), a global engineering program that combines a spring semester course with a short-term international track in the summer. In that role, I helped with developing and coordinating the international tracks, teaching the course, and traveling with students as a track leader. I also spent two summers at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia working on engineering education research through the International Research Experience for Students (IRES) program.

My research at Virginia Tech focused on global engineering programs, both through my work with RSAP and as the focus of my dissertation project. As a part of my role with RSAP, I coordinated data collection and analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate the program. From this work, I have co-written three journal articles and several conference papers. My dissertation is titled “Pursuing Intentional Design of Global Engineering Programs” and it combines three studies that seek to understand different aspects of global program development: assessment, program destination, and student experiences. For my work in this area, I was awarded the Harold Josephson award for professional promise in international education by the Association of International Education Administrators.