Daniel Frey Honored

with 2006 Joseph A. Martore Excellence in Teaching Award

By Lois Slavin, ESD Communications Director – February 15, 2007

February 13, 2007 – Institute Professor Joel Moses, ESD Acting Director, has announced that the Professor Daniel D. Frey is the 2006 winner of the Joseph A. Martore Excellence in Teaching Award. This award was established to recognize and honor an ESD faculty member who has made outstanding contributions to one of ESD’s academic programs in the areas of education and program development.

Dr. Frey is Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Systems. He was specifically cited by his nominators as “an exceptionally gifted teacher and educator who …has made outstanding contributions to the ESD educational agenda.”

Specific areas noted by the nominators included:

• Developing the first course in robustness for the SDM program in 1998; core content in Mechanical Engineering for key core courses such as 2.007 and 2.72; and a hands-on and problem-oriented course in statistics
• Serving as a key member of the team charged with revising SDM’s Systems Engineering course. “Dan’s hard work and passionate teaching have taken the Systems Engineering course into an entirely new and very stable framework, with a core consisting of the intellectual underpinnings for the Systems Engineering discipline, augmented by direct applications in robust design and other key methods”.
• Serving on the ESD Undergraduate Task Force “He has gained the respect of his task force colleagues through his well-thought through and well-stated views about the directions ESD should take in undergraduate education….his contribution to our major report in Fall 2004 on ESD’s role in the undergraduate domain at MIT was substantial and his contribution to our d’ Arbeloff proposal to support ESD’s initiatives in undergraduate education is vital. He is a major player in this enterprise.”
• Contributing to the ESD Doctoral Seminar.”… the content he brings to the seminar (is) among the most important overall for the students and their growth as complex systems researchers. The topics include…statistical thinking, which Dan does an excellent job of linking firmly to research and engineering on engineering systems…(and) a deep discussion of the philosophy of science and epistemology of knowledge that he has evolved over the past several years. This topic has identified for the students some new ways of thinking about their own position relative to systems thinking and their personal research agenda….he has become one of the pillars of the doctoral seminar goal of being a key enabler of our doctoral students’ transition from students to researchers.”
• Working with the WGBH Educational Foundation to develop a proposal for an innovative new television series that has the potential to attract many more young people to be interested in becoming engineers.” Through “Design Squad,” which premiers locally on WGBH-TV on February24, 2007 at 11:30 A.M.. …“Frey has helped to assure a full pipeline as well as continuing to deliver ‘quality) products’ to people already undergoing engineering education.”
• Continuously publishing scholarly work in the educational field that is “extremely highly regarded by leading figures in education scholarship..”

“To make these contributions to education while still a junior faculty member is extraordinary,” concluded one of the nominators.

Professor Frey will receive a plaque of appreciation and a monetary award.