Skip to content
Provided by ASME Logo The American Society of Mechanical Engineers

Student Workshop

The ASME IGTI Student Advisory Committee workshop is available to all Turbo Expo virtual conference attendees. Register to attend this highly informative workshop organized by the SAC. View the complete technical sessions program.

Join us for a roundtable and networking opportunity to learn about student memberships, benefits, the mentorship platform and our new ASMEStore.com! Stick around to get any of your questions answered!

Two opportunities: Monday, June 7th 11:30-12pm & Wednesday, June 9th 11:30-12pm.

Dr. Catherine G.P. Berdanier

Dr. Catherine G.P. Berdanier

Assistant Professor and Clyde W. Shuman Jr. and Nancy Shuman Early Career Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Pennsylvania State University
Director of the Online MSME Program

Informed by over 5 years of NSF-funded research in graduate engineering socialization, attrition, and persistence, this workshop is based around the idea of "invisible competencies" and "threshold concepts" that graduate students often struggle through and may not be able to articulate, but are critical to success in academic engineering. This workshop will illuminate these often invisible competencies and threshold concepts, help students identify appropriate resources and strategies to approach these common issues, and discuss “triage” issues related to graduate student well-being, handling advisor conflict, and considering departure from their academic program. Out of this live interactive session, students will come away with easily implemented strategies through which to approach issues arising in their own education and a template for personalized professional development at their own institutions pertaining to their own career goals.

Dr. Catherine G.P. Berdanier is an Assistant Professor and Clyde W. Shuman Jr. and Nancy Shuman Early Career Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University and is the Director of the Online MSME Program. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry from The University of South Dakota, her M.S. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering and Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University. She directs the Engineering Cognitive Research Laboratory (E-CRL), which focuses attention on graduate-level engineering education and methodological development within a disciplinary setting. Her research has been published in Journal of Engineering Education, International Journal of Engineering Education, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, and many other journal and conference venues. She is a recent winner of an NSF CAREER grant studying master’s-level departure from the engineering doctorate.