Tufts University
Merredith Portsmore is the director of the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach, as well as a research assistant professor. She has the unique honor of being a “Quadruple Jumbo,” having received all her four of her degrees from Tufts University (B.A. in English, B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, M.A. in Education, and Ph.D. in Engineering Education). Merredith’s research interests focus on how children engage in constructing solutions to engineering design problems, how teachers learn engineering in online environments, and how outreach programs impact K-12 students. Her outreach work focuses on creating resources for K-12 educators to support engineering education in the classroom. She is the founder of STOMP, LEGOEngineering.com, and the online Teacher Engineering Education Program (teep.tufts.edu). She was one of Co-Is on the Novel Engineering (novelengineering.org) project at Tufts that developed an approach for integrating engineering and literacy in K-8.
Favorite children’s book: Gregor the Overlander series by Suzanne Collins.
“I just read it with my son, and I am in awe of Suzanne Collins and really want to ride my own bat.”