While Holly M. Matusovich worked for aerospace manufacturer Alcoa Inc. in the early 2000’s, she found that one of the best parts of her job as an engineer and quality systems supervisor was when she was interviewing employees on the factory floor. She wanted to understand how engineers think, what motivated them in their work and careers, and how they learned new skills.

Around that time across town, Purdue was establishing its School of Engineering Education and offering a Ph.D. in the newly emerging discipline. Although she was concerned about what job prospects she would find after completing her doctoral journey (after all, this was a new area of academic study), Holly enrolled in the Ph.D. program and says she never looked back.

Holly was among the first handful of people to graduate with a doctorate in Engineering Education from Purdue. She credits her doctoral advisor, Ruth Streveler, with excellent mentoring and guidance, “seeing me as a whole person,” and connecting her with pioneers in the field. In the past 15 years, Holly advanced from her first position as assistant professor in the (then newly formed) Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech (VT) to Associate Dean of Graduate and Professional Studies in VT’s College of Engineering. The program she now leads serves more than 3,000 students across multiple campuses.

Prior to taking on her leadership role and serving as editor-and-chief of the national journal Advances in Engineering Education, Holly mentored and empowered grad students (14+), helped restructure VT’s first-year engineering program, started the first research group model among her peers at VT, and focused her research on motivation theories to understand how students learn and career pathways through engineering (41 journal publications; 100+ conference papers).

During her career, she has contributed significant time and attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. For her efforts to facilitate the advancement of women in engineering, Holly was recognized with a Distinguished Purdue Alumni Scholar award by the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence.