Aircraft manufacturer Airbus and the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC), the leading international organization for engineering education, have selected Ana Lazarin from Wichita State University as the inaugural recipient of the GEDC Airbus Diversity Award.
The award was presented Oct. 21 at the Art Institute of Chicago during the GEDC annual conference, hosted by the University of Notre Dame.
Lazarin was recognized for her outreach, recruitment and retention programs which have increased the number of underrepresented minority students in the College of Engineering at Wichita State University by 91 percent in the last five years.
The GEDC Airbus Diversity Award is intended to recognize individuals who have been proactive in bringing more diversity into engineering classrooms around the world. It recognizes initiatives that encourage students of all profiles, gender, social and cultural backgrounds as well as disability to study and succeed in engineering.
The other finalists for the 2013 award were Catherine Pieronek, assistant dean for academic affairs and director of the Women's Engineering Program at the University of Notre Dame, and Maria Angeles Martin Prats, associate professor, University of Seville, Spain.