2025 AIChE Annual Meeting

(330d) Meetings, Mentoring, and Middle-of-the-Night Emails: Reflections on Service

Author

Jennifer Cole - Presenter, Northwestern University
Presentation by the recipient of the 2024 Award for Service to Chemical Engineering Education.

For dedicating her career to enhancing equity in engineering education, innovating teaching strategies, and prioritizing mentorship for students and faculty in NU, AIChE, and ASEE.

As faculty we often have a requirement for service--the visible, formal service like committees, course coordination, and mentoring/advising. But just as often we are engaged in the hidden service--the hallway conversations, the default note-taking, or middle-of-the-night emails from students in crisis. I’ll reflect on how this service has shown up in the life of a teaching track faculty member and what it means to “hold the center” in an engineering program: to be a steady, trusted presence for students and colleagues, especially those students who are navigating complex academic or personal challenges, and how that kind of service work—relational, equity-focused, often invisible—is both emotionally demanding and deeply meaningful.