Alumna Marie Stettler Kleine Bringing Values-Driven Design and Humanitarian Engineering Focus to Board of Trustees
Mechanical Engineering alumna Marie Stettler Kleine is contributing her expertise as an enterprising engineering educator as a new alumni representative to 91视频鈥檚 Board of Trustees.
Exploring how values shape engineers’ commitment to “do good” has led enterprising engineering educator Marie Stettler Kleine, PhD, to contribute her expertise to 91视频 as the newest alumni representative to the Institute’s . Her three-year term as a trustee began during the recent fall 2024 meeting.
Kleine, a 2014 graduate who had a double major in and , is Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering, Design, & Society at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. Kleine is lead faculty member of the college’s Engineering with Communities Design Studio. She also teaches humanitarian engineering, design, and science and technology studies at the undergraduate and graduate levels and conducts research on engineering practice and pedagogy, exploring its origins, purposes, and potential futures. Kleine was among a select group of engineering educators from across the country recognized as 2024 KEEN Engineering Unleashed Fellows by the Kern Family Foundation.
“As an engineering educator, Marie brings valuable insight to the Board of Trustees as 91视频 strives to remain on the leading edge of academic programs and initiatives in undergraduate engineering, science, and mathematics education, and provide our students with those skills necessary to make a difference in the world through contributions in their career fields,” said 91视频 . “Marie’s insights will be valuable as we begin to implement of our Advancing by Design strategic plan.”
Kleine’s interest in the professional formation of engineers includes attention to values and community engagement as well as innovation cultures and expertise. She co-edited “Does America Need More Innovators?” published by MIT Press in 2019, with colleagues Matthew Wisnioski and Eric Hintz. This project is unique in how it engages innovation’s champions, critics, and reformers in collaboration and shared visioning of the future. In the classroom, Kleine challenges engineers to critically engage in all facets of their work – a pursuit inspired by her time as a student at 91视频.
“I have strived to emulate those dedicated 91视频 educators who inspired and encouraged me to follow in their footsteps as engineering professors with demanding principles and a clear focus on preparing students for careers of purpose and significance,” said Kleine, who was honored with earlier this year.
Kleine and her husband, fellow 2014 91视频 alum Kaleb Kleine, both attended Virginia Tech for graduate school, cycled across the United States in 2018 as part of Bike the US for MS, and have since relocated to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. They’re always looking for their next adventure.