Prof.
Christopher Magee Honored
with
ESD Educational Excellence Award
By
Lois
Slavin, ESD Communications Director
– October 31, 2005
On
October 14, 2005, Professor Christopher
L. Magee was honored with the third
annual Joseph A. Martore (1975) ESD
Educational Excellence Award. This
honor is given to a full-time member
of the ESD faculty or teaching staff
in recognition of outstanding contributions
in education to an ESD academic program,
such as MLOG, SDM, LFM, TPP, and the
ESD Ph.D.
Although
teaching is an important component,
this award also recognizes other contributions
to ESD academic program development.
“The thought behind the award
was to recognize the leadership role
that ESD/MIT faculty members serve
in preparing and influencing students
to make real world engineering contributions
to society,” said Martore, who
received both an SB and an SM in Civil
Engineering from MIT.
Magee
has been Professor of the Practice
of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering
Systems, and Director of ESD’s
Center for Innovation in Product Development
since 2002. He came to ESD after 35
years at Ford Motor Company, where
his early career involved research
and technology implementation work.
He later served in several executive
positions involving product development,
with a focus on vehicle systems and
program initiation activities.
Magee
has made significant contributions
from the onset of his affiliation
with ESD. He worked with Dr. Joel
Cutcher-Gershenfeld to develop, and
now teach, the ESD Doctoral Seminar.
“Chris
has provided strong leadership in
shaping seminar content and ensuring
effective delivery of the material
and he continues to read widely in
order to keep the seminar content
at the cutting edge of new knowledge,”
said Cutcher-Gershenfeld. “He
also provides critical coaching and
mentoring to the doctoral students.
Finally, Chris is committed to innovation
in pedagogy, always looking for better
ways to enable learning to take place.”
Professor
Warren Seering joined the nomination
process based on Chris’ work
as a section leader in 2.009 Product
Development Processes, a crucial design
class in Mechanical Engineering. “Every
year Chris supervises two 15-member
teams. In each case, his efforts have
been well-received by the students
because he not only knows the material
but also how to interact with them.
Consequently his impact on the course
has been substantial.”
Dr.
Daniel Whitney noted that in his collaboration
with Chris and Institute Professor
Joel Moses on ESD .938 Advanced System
Architecture, he observed Chris’
ability to move into new intellectual
areas, read current literature, absorb
basic ideas quickly, and break them
out into astute presentations and
close scrutiny of their underlying
principles.
“It
was truly exciting to watch,”
said Whitney, adding that Chris generated
the bulk of the lectures covering
core modeling and analytical methods,
created most homework assignments,
and correlated them with the course’s
fundamental ideas.
“Although
I believe that the three of us contributed
more or less equally to designing
this course, Chris accomplished the
bulk of the innovative task of creating
a teachable core,” Whitney continued.
“His efforts reflect his strong
commitment to strengthening ESD’s
Ph.D. course offerings, which is…very
important to the Division’s
future.”
When
asked how he felt about receiving
the award, Magee said that this award
“was shockingly pleasing”
as he has been busy learning how to
teach from the people who selected
him . He added that he is very happy
to move from “rookie status
to ‘up and comer” in his
educational role.”
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