University of Mashhad, Iran. She is currently a PhD student in the School of Engineering at The University of Oklahoma. Her passion for engineering education stems from her basic curiosity to develop more effective engineering curriculum to help students to meet their professional demands. This motivated her to take part in engineering education research.

Undergraduate Construction Management programs value both advanced education and construction experience in faculty. As more construction programs require faculty to hold a PhD, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find quality tenure-track faculty applicants with both a PhD and industry experience. Generally, the path to a PhD does not leave room for significant construction industry experience. The shortest path to a PhD is continuous education from undergraduate through graduate school. Once a person leaves the education path and enters industry, it is often hard to leave industry for full-time studies and construction does not lend itself to part-time graduate studies while working full-time. These divergent paths to a professional career leave a gap in prospective construction educators.The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) values construction experience in construction management faculty and has sponsored summer internships to increase faculty industry experience. The internship program is structured by a three party agreement between AGC, the sponsoring university, and a local contractor. Each of the three parties pays a third of the faculty intern's regular monthly salary. Thus, each entity has a vested interest in the faculty intern's success in the program and its benefits to education.The University of Oklahoma took this opportunity to partner with a local general contractor to increase faculty construction experience and to train the faculty member in the use of Revit Structure. The faculty intern joined the contractor's pre-construction team and developed the Revit model for an upcoming project. The model was used by the contractor for their planning purposes. This additional Revit expertise will be integrated into the structures and documents classes. Through this industry experience and training, the faculty intern will bring construction knowledge and real world examples from industry back to the classroom to enhance learning.

Anna Woodcock is a social psychologist and faculty member at California State University San Marcos. She is currently investigating the contextual factors that promote and reinforce social disparities such as the underrepresentation of women and minorities in STEM. Specifically: individual differences in motivations to pursue STEM careers; the psychological processes underlying the underrepresentation of women and minorities in STEM; and effective interventions for diversifying STEM.c American Society for Engineering Education, 2016 Improving Student Spatial Skills: Using Life Experiences and Motivational Factors to Inform Instructional InterventionsSpatial thinking refers to the ability to create and hold an object in the mind's eye and manipulate that object via sectional cuts, three dimensional rotations, and other mental operations. Prior research suggests that the degree to which students differ in their development of spatial skills affects their performance on instructional tasks that require spatial visualization. This study builds on prior efforts to identify how individuals' beliefs and experiences influence spatial skills. A revised instrument was developed and allows for the analysis of the interaction between early life experiences, motivation, and spatial skills. Based on a factor analysis, these life experiences are grouped into factors that are then analyzed for correlation with spatial skills. Results indicate a positive correlation between early life experiences in designing and building things and high spatial skills. Results also indicate those that believe knowledge is fixed tend to have lower spatial skills. This effect is mediated by individuals' self-efficacy beliefs.

Matthew received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Texas A&M University. After working for several years in the construction industry both in the field and in management, he joined the Construction Science faculty at the University of Oklahoma in 2012. Along with his research interests in earthen construction and the Latino workforce, he is interested in teaching students to improve their visuo-spatial skills and abilities.