Pierrakos Receives 2023 CBOV Faculty Leadership Award
Dr. Olga Pierrakos, Professor of Engineering, has been awarded the 2023 College Board of Visitors Faculty Leadership Award. Since 2017, the College Board of Visitors has supported an annual faculty award to recognize outstanding academic leadership in the Undergraduate College.
“I am honored to receive the 2023 College Board of Visitors Faculty Leadership Award and feel blessed for the recognition that the College Board and my colleagues have offered me. Engineers have an immense responsibility to better humanity and I felt this responsibility as the Founding Chair of Wake Forest Engineering. On the first day of the first-ever Engineering class back in August 2017, I shared with the 55 students and the founding Engineering faculty Maya Angelou’s famous quote: ‘Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.’ Engineers do not only better humanity with scientific and technological innovations but they should better humanity in any role they take on. That is the vision and hope I had and continue to have for all our Wake Forest Engineering graduates,” Dr. Pierrakos said.
Dr. Pierrakos was selected as this year’s recipient for her visionary leadership as the founding chair of the Department of Engineering, a position she served for six years. When she arrived at Wake Forest in 2017, Dr. Pierrakos began the immense task of developing the new undergraduate engineering program. The founding team arrived on-site six weeks prior to the inaugural engineering students’ arrival. Dr. Pierrakos moved quickly to establish a distinctive vision for the department and implement a collaborative and inclusive process upon which to develop the four-year curriculum and ensure that it can be accredited. Visioning, planning, strategy, and execution were happening at the same time in all aspects — recruiting, hiring, renovations, pedagogy, mentoring, advising, curriculum design, etc. “Building the airplane as it’s flying” was a phrase often used to describe the building of Wake Forest Engineering. It was an iterative and inclusive process engaging all key stakeholders, including the engineering students and external experts.
In the first three years, the Engineering Department saw expansive growth to more than 200 students in its major, received ABET accreditation after an extensive review process, and numerous faculty members were awarded recognition and research grants with top engineering associations.
Dr. Pierrakos’ vision for an inclusive and robust program has become a reality in a short period of time. More than 40 percent of Wake engineering students annually are women, almost double the national average, and with 20 percent of Wake engineering students identifying with diverse backgrounds, more than 4 times the national average, more voices and perspectives are shaping the future of engineering inside our classrooms. This Spring, the department will graduate its fourth class, and these 2024 Engineering graduates will join the growing alumni base, who have established themselves as innovative thinkers and Pro Humanitate-minded engineers.
Dr. Jackie Krasas, Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, said, “In such a short time, Wake Forest Engineering has become a nationally recognized program and was recently ranked 14th Best Undergraduate Engineering Program. The program also supports unprecedented student and faculty diversity, curricular innovation, and pedagogical advances as recognized through the hard-earned ABET accreditation. For these reasons and so many more, I applaud Dr. Olga Pierrakos for her leadership as founding chair and congratulate her for this honor that recognizes her influence across Wake Forest University.”
Dr. Pierrakos’ dedication to the department stands out across the six nominations she received from colleagues as this year’s award nominee. Each spoke to her approach to building a diverse program that bridges STEM and liberal arts with an interdisciplinary and innovative outlook.
One colleague within the Department of Engineering said, “Dr. Pierrakos’ intentional approach to education at the class, curriculum, university, and community levels with the overarching goal of flexibility and accessibility has provided an opportunity for students of varied backgrounds to approach engineering in a way that has a common core while being individually customizable based on broad interests and experiences. This is supported by multidisciplinary exposure to like concepts both within an engineering context and more broadly to other fields.”
Another spoke of experiential learning and student-centered pedagogy built into the department’s curriculum at every level, something Dr. Pierrakos has prioritized from the beginning: “Our first-year courses are accessible to all students, regardless of their prior experiences. These courses contain several projects that introduce students to the engineering problem-solving process while emphasizing human-centered design … All students explore a specific engineering problem with an interdisciplinary lens through their senior capstone design courses, which Olga played a key role in designing.”
Others outside the Department of Engineering spoke to Dr. Pierrakos’ interdisciplinary approach, writing, “She worked closely with other STEM chairs as well as those outside STEM to create a program that offers a great liberal arts and Engineering education. She worked with me to make modifications in both our majors that improve the experience for all our students.”
Dr. Pierrakos said, “I am honored and proud to have served our students and our colleagues, and I am indebted to many wonderful people,” Pierrakos said.
For her sustaining efforts in establishing the top-tier Engineering Department and her contributions across the College, we congratulate Dr. Olga Pierrakos as this year’s CBOV faculty leadership award recipient.
