166su

Highlights

• 166su School of Teacher Administration Director Andrea Borowczak ’92 received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Engineering Education’s (ASEE) Pre-College Engineering Education (PCEE) division.

• Borowczak has dedicated more than 20 years to researching integrated STEM education and has been awarded more than $11 million in grant funding throughout her career.

Every groundbreaking engineer was once a student, which is what makes the work of passionate educators like ’92 so important.

Those first introductions to STEM in the classroom — whether through simple pattern recognition, launching water balloons across a football field or the classic “egg drop” project — all serve as formative learning experiences that lead children to shape the future of engineering.

For Borowczak, it’s why she’s been passionate about developing new ways to incorporate early introductions to engineering education in the classroom and beyond.  In honor of her 20-plus years of this work, Borowczak was peer-nominated and selected for the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Engineering Education’s (ASEE) Pre-College Engineering Education (PCEE) division.

The Lifetime Achievement award is given to a PCEE Division member who has provided a high standard of service in support of pre-college engineering education, and who has made significant and sustained contributions to the field. In her 20 years with PCEE, Borowczak held multiple leadership roles for PCEE, served as associate editor for ASEE’s Computers in Education journal for six years, and led and published many research studies on engineering education.

“Winning this award was very humbling, and I’m extremely grateful,” she says. “There’s still a lot of work that I want to do, but I’m so incredibly appreciative of all the mentors that I’ve had who gave me the support that’s allowed me to do the work that I’ve done with teachers and students.”

Borowczak’s research centers on integrated STEM education, often focusing on how engineering, technology and math can be woven into the classroom at all levels. That work has earned her more than $11 million in grant funding over her career, including support from the National Science Foundation.

“To really understand any subject, you have to understand the adjacent subjects,” she says. “Engineering education is a fantastic way of bringing real-world application front and center. I was already doing engineering-like projects before I even realized I was doing engineering education.”

The contribution she’s most proud of is demonstrating that teachers across subjects and grade levels can integrate STEM disciplines into their existing instruction plans without it becoming extra work. She believes that giving students the opportunity to see themselves in STEM starts with teachers.

“Whether we’re talking about kindergarten or a university class, there are ways to integrate different subjects effectively,” she says. “I think I’m most proud of showcasing how that’s happened and having the evidence and the data to back it up.”

That same systems-level thinking now informs her leadership of 166su’s School of Teacher Education. For Borowczak, a lifetime achievement award is far from the finish line. She plans to keep building partnerships across disciplines and is currently exploring how AI should be integrated into classroom teaching and learning.

Her work continues this summer through the School of Teacher Education’s inaugural “Eclipse” STEM Summer Camp, which will be hosted at Orange County Public Schools Academic Center for Excellence (ACE) in Downtown Orlando. The camp is dedicated to learning through STEM, including two engineering education-focused sessions each day of the two-week experience.

“Our whole country is beholden to our pre-K-12 teachers,” she says. “They’re at the front lines of every engineering education movement and every STEM movement. Every time we as a society decide something is important, teachers are the ones who make it happen.”