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Richard M. Felder (born 1939 in New York City) is the Hoechst Celanese Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University.

With Ronald Rousseau and Lisa Bullard, he is coauthor of Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes (4th Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2015), a text for the introductory chemical engineering course, and with Rebecca Brent, he is coauthor of Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide (Jossey-Bass, 2016), a guidebook for instructors of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses.

Education and career history

Felder received a BChE degree from the City College of New York in 1962 and a PhD in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 1966. He spent a year as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (Harwell, England) and then two years as a research engineer at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1969 he joined the chemical engineering faculty at North Carolina State University, and he retired to emeritus status in 1999. He spent sabbatical semesters at the University of Colorado (1982), Georgia Tech (1990), the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (2003), and Smith College (2006).

Professional contributions

Engineering research

For roughly the first half of his career, Felder carried out research on a variety of topics, starting with his doctoral and postdoctoral research on energy distributions of energetic atoms in irradiated media, progressing through mathematical modeling of mixing and diffusion in chemical reactors, fluidized bed gasification of coal, and diffusion of gases and vapors in polymer membranes, and concluding with stochastic modeling of specialty chemicals manufacturing processes. He has authored or coauthored over 300 papers on chemical process engineering and engineering and science education.

Introductory chemical engineering textbook

Felder coauthored Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes with Ronald W. Rousseau and (in the fourth edition) Lisa G. Bullard. The book first appeared in 1978 and became the standard textbook for the introductory chemical engineering course in the United States. It has been adopted by more than 90% of all U.S. chemical engineering departments and at many institutions in other countries. It was translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Korean editions.

Research and writing on teaching and learning

Beginning in the late 1980s, Felder shifted his career focus from disciplinary engineering research to education, including educational research. Besides his book Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide, he has authored or coauthored two book chapters and over 200 education related articles^[1] and over 100 "Random Thoughts" columns^[2] in the quarterly journal Chemical Engineering Education. His research and publications deal with many aspects of teaching and learning, with his primary emphasis being on student-centered instructional methods including active learning (involving students in course-relevant activities during classes rather than relying entirely on lecturing as the medium of instruction) and cooperative learning (getting students to complete assignments and projects in teams under conditions that include holding all team members individually accountable for all of the work done).^[3] Felder discussed his teaching philosophy in an interview in the Journal of Science Education in 2002.^[4] Most of his publications and resources he has developed for instructors and students can be found on his website.^[5]

Faculty development

Felder has given over 300 education-related seminars and—with his wife and colleague, Rebecca Brent—over 300 teaching workshops on campuses throughout the United States and abroad. He is the co-founder (with James Stice) of the National Effective Teaching Institute sponsored by the American Society for Engineering Education, and co-directed it from 1991 through 2015.

Index of Learning Styles

Felder co-developed and validated an on-line instrument called the Index of Learning Styles^[6] that assesses students' preferences on four dimensions of a learning styles model^[7] he had previously co-developed with Linda K. Silverman.

References

External links

• Resources in Science and Engineering Education personal website